


Ysyha'h In Your Eyes

by Anonymous



Series: Bangs and Thangs [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Body Horror, Complete, Consentacles, Dark Comedy, Fluff and Humor, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Insanity, Lovecraftian Horror, M/M, Minor Character Death, Misunderstandings, New York City, Non-Sexual Bondage, Oral Sex, Overstimulation, Romantic Comedy, Serious Injuries, Song Lyrics, Temporary Character Death, Tentacle Dick, Tentacle Monsters, Tentacle Sex, Touch-Starved Keith (Voltron), Weird Plot Shit, non-sexual nudity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-05-30 00:24:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 28,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15084998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Takashi "Shiro" Shirogane is a former astronaut, now living as a magazine writer in New York City. He meets a cute barista named Keith, and they seem to hit it off with one another almost immediately.However, as Shiro starts to fall for Keith, Keith himself seems reluctant to get too close to Shiro, and Shiro starts to notice things aren't exactly what they seem. Maybe it's the dreams of endless non-Euclidean geometry. Maybe it's the notes of screaming gibberish he doesn't remember writing. Maybe it's the random solar eclipses and spontaneous combustion happening throughout the city. Or maybe it's because he never thought to ask whether Keith had a last name.Call himcrazy, but some weird things have been happening as of late, and Keith seems scared to go into detail about what's bothering him. If he and Keith are going to have a relationship, Shiro knows they're going to have to eventually be open and honest about their feelings - even if it eventually kills him. Er, I meanthem. Them.A story about a soft and good love that might just win out, in a universe that is cold and terrible and filled with those unseen truths which would drive normal men to the brink of madness.





	1. Kn'a

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [voltron_sheith_kink_meme](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/voltron_sheith_kink_meme) collection. 



> __  
> **Prompt:**  
>   
> 
> _A cute, silly story of boy loves boy and miscellaneous rom-com hijinks in which Keith happens to be a lonely, lovelorn tentacle monster. He uses magical glamours to hide this so he can have something that passes for a “normal” life, but they aren’t always perfect and Keith has a harder time keeping his up when he’s emotionally keyed-up. Fearing what will happen if he’s discovered (both the rejection _and_ the possibility of being fetishized for his tentacles), Keith doesn’t let himself get close to most people._
> 
>  
> 
> _But damn, he really wants to get close to Shiro. Fortunately, Shiro wants to be with Keith as well, and when he finds out about Keith’s tentacles, he’s loving, supportive, affirming, and pretty much everything Keith wanted but assumed he’d never get._
> 
>  
> 
> _BONUS: Feel free to work in unrelated silly rom-com nonsense (with a metamodern/Deadpoolian sense of humor about it or not). Maybe Shiro is a single twenty-something hottie living in the city and working at a magazine. Maybe there are awkward encounters with each other’s roommates (Hunk and Lance for Keith + Allura and Lotor for Shiro? or whatever works best for you), give or take someone’s roommates giving the other a, “Don’t you DARE hurt him” speech. Maybe Keith pulling away makes Shiro think he screwed something up, so he decides to publicly serenade Keith with “Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You.” Maybe they have a Big Damn Kiss in the middle of a rainstorm. Go wild, have fun._
> 
>  
> 
> _DOUBLE BONUS: Additional “friends to lovers” stuff where Keith and Shiro already know and trust each other, but Keith is still afraid that Shiro will reject and abandon him if he finds out about the tentacle monster thing._
> 
>  
> 
> _TRIPLE BONUS: If you can find a way to force these idiots to “platonically” share a bed before they actually get together, you can have my soul. Or trade for a different kink meme fill. Whichever is more valuable to you._
> 
>  
> 
> _Any and all gender headcanons are fair game!_
> 
>  
> 
> I will do my best, nonny. _Hai ya lw'nafh f'r'luh gotha, y'hah, y'hah..._

The first sign Shiro should have taken as a warning that something was off with Keith was way back when they first met.

Keith was working at the coffee place Shiro had generally frequented since he arrived in Manhattan; it was his first week on the job, and he was the one who got Shiro’s order. The moment their eyes met, Keith became slightly flustered, though to be fair, Shiro’s order of a triple ristretto affogato was complicated. (He was in a fancy mood that morning, given he was about to do an interview with Melon Tusk that afternoon – yes, _that_ Melon Tusk. Shiro still couldn’t believe it.) He’d turned a soft pink as he slowly repeated the order, and proceeded to start making it as Shiro waited.

His blush only deepened into an embarrassed red when the naked man covered in…well, it didn’t matter what he was covered in. He burst into the café, eyes wide and bloodshot, drool mixed with blood dripping from his toothless mouth, as he began to scream incomprehensible gibberish combined with expletives that would have made Commander Iverson blush in his spats. He also kept trying to grab the baristas and drag them outside, which resulted in the only legible words the strange man spoke.

_Unclean. Unclean._

The man was taken away by the police, and Shiro learned Keith’s name as he repeated it back to the officer taking down the report. The disturbance made the news, as did the follow-up that the naked man – a high-powered businessman until recently - had hung himself in his cell, blood-written runes of interminable origin written on the walls and pillow of where he’d been. Shiro had simply assumed it was a tragedy, but certainly nothing related to him, or to the café. It had just been a man who’d lost his mind.

Besides, he met a cute guy - a guy couldn't help but want to get more about, if he was allowed to. He really hoped he would be allowed to.

 

* * *

 

Within a few weeks, Keith had learned Shiro’s orders by heart, which made Shiro’s mornings that much brighter. In comparison to being out in space, journalism was boring, even when it came to technology that would allow others to go into space. Space was infinite and beautiful and _god_ Shiro wanted to go back there one day.

Having one arm after losing it in an accident was, unfortunately, a bit of a hindrance to that dream. He would have to be content with writing about the astronauts that went after him, and with the comforts of a normal life. Having a nice cup of good coffee was one of those things that made the days go by a little less bitterly.

Then there was the morning Shiro forgot to go to the café. Within an hour, his editor’s needling him about a new assignment (He got to review yet _another_ space simulator for the Bex-Box Won.  That the editor was _certain_ would change the landscape of video games forever. _Whee_.) and he was about to step outside of the office to get some fresh air so he didn’t lash out at anyone.

He nearly ran into Keith.

“Woah—” Shiro stumbled back. “Hey, what are you doing here?”

Keith blinked several times, then held up a to-go cup.

“You didn’t come in,” he said, as if the answer was obvious. “I figured you forgot. So instead, I made you one on the house.”

Shiro looked down at the cup, then back up at Keith.

“You did this for me?” He slowly took the cup. “Not that I’m not grateful, Keith, thank you, but how did you know where I worked?”

Keith’s eyes shifted to each side as he answered.

“I asked around. It was no big deal. So, um, have a good day and don’t go walking down Utica St. today. No real reason I’m saying that, just don’t. Bye.”

Keith then turned and left without another word. Shiro wouldn’t learn about the mass arrests at the so-called Horror House of Utica St. until the eleven o’clock news casually mentioned the child slaves that were freed from the strange, cult-like family that lived there. Upon hearing that, Shiro had quickly shut the TV off; the world already had enough problems without such weird happenings, and he couldn’t let the thought of such terrors affect his dreams.

Indeed, his last thought before falling asleep was to make sure he didn’t forget to go to the café the next morning – he didn’t want Keith fired for such a kind gesture. So, the next morning, Shiro ordered two triple ristretto affogatos.

“Oh.” Keith seemed surprised. “Are you that thirsty?”

Shiro couldn’t help but chuckle.

“Actually, I’m ordering it for you, if you’ll take it.”

That cute pink dusting on Keith’s cheeks returned, and he did something Shiro hadn’t seen up until that point: smile. At that same moment, for some reason, the sky outside seemed to darken until it was almost like night. Not that Shiro was paying that much attention to it at the time – he was too busy making sure he was giving Keith a nice big tip. No, he only heard about the inexplicable solar eclipse when he was at work, when his copy editor was complaining that the eclipse caused her to put her makeup on wrong while she was driving, and…

Oh, did he hear about the three cars that drove themselves off the side of the Brooklyn Bridge while the very sun was blot out? He hadn’t. It was a bit unnerving to hear that was even possible, given all the safety precautions that were put up to prevent that sort of thing.

 

* * *

 

As time went by, Shiro kept his promise to keep going to the café, every morning. Soon he was going even on weekends, and thus began to get to know Keith as a result. The weekends weren’t as busy as the workdays were, so there was much more time for Keith to talk to Shiro between customers. Soon, Shiro was getting an idea of who Keith was, so he thought.

Keith, who never shared his last name so far as Shiro could recall, was from Texas. He’d lived there for a good part of his life, in fact. He’d never recommend living there long-term, though – too much sand, and desolation, and the people who were his neighbors were apparently quite hostile to him. His mother had left him as a baby, and he hardly knew his father, or if he even had one (which, Shiro, thought, _of course_ he had to have a father, that’s how babies are made), so he was raised by anyone willing to take him. After he got tired of Texas, he decided to move.

There was no doubt more to the story, but Shiro wasn’t going to pry. It was Keith’s business whether to tell him anything or not, and the fact he’d been willing to share as much as he did was a mark of trust. So Shiro simply smiled and nodded.

“What about you?” Keith pointed to Shiro’s lack of arm. “How did you lose your limb?”

“Oh.” Shiro’s remaining hand went up to the void where nothing was. “That was an accident. Emergency situation on the way back from Kerberos.”

Keith’s eyes widened.

“Kerberos? You mean you’ve been out in space?” He sounded surprised, fascinated and slightly skeptical. “And you came back alive? _Really_?”

“Well, yes. Injured, but alive. I can never go back into space again, though. Not like this.”

“And your crew? Did they come back less intact than you, or…?”

“Actually, they came out of it unscathed.” Shiro blinked. Keith didn’t know about the Kerberos mission? It was practically world news. “You seem surprised to hear about that.”

“Oh, of course!” For a moment, Keith’s eyes widened, and he spread out his hands. “It isn’t safe for humanity, after all, those spaces—”

It was then another customer came in, shouting loudly about wanting an Americano with _sugar_ , not _Splenda_. With that, Keith quickly excused himself, and returned to the counter, leaving Shiro to ponder what he meant. He had mentioned he lived in Texas, which was known to have remote areas, and not in the best of circumstances, so perhaps he’d grown up sheltered. It made the most sense to Shiro.

What made slightly less sense was when Shiro left the café and found the Americano guy following him. After trying to lose him for four blocks, Shiro gave up and turned to face him.

“Ok. What do you want?”

The other guy’s response was to throw his scalding coffee into Shiro’s face. Or try to, at least – Shiro was nothing but fast, and managed to dodge most of it. The stuff that did hit him ended up burning his arm and sleeve, and he couldn’t help but wince because it was smoking and _painful_.

“What the— _hey_!” Shiro, and another passerby, nevertheless managed to wrestle the knife he pulled out as he tried to charge Shiro again. “What is wrong with you? Stop…!”

“Failure…”

With surprising strength, the Americano guy managed to toss both Shiro and his helper away several feet. Then, with wide eyes, he spotted a truck driving down the streets and closing in.

“Oh, Great Falseness!” Before anyone could stop him, he was jumping in front of the 18-wheeler, arms outstretched in supplication. “I have failed thee—”

Shiro’s eyes widened, then shut tight before the ensuing, splattering hit.

 

* * *

 

As the police interviewed him, and his arm was given burn cream, one of the officers came up to him with an evidence bag.

“Here you go.” To Shiro’s surprise, the bag contained his assailant’s knife. It was a dark purple, almost black, with a dark silver blade's edge. It was all made of a heavy, sturdy material Shiro couldn’t identify on sight. “According to the other eyewitnesses, this belongs to you, does it not?”

“I…” As he turned it around in his hands, Shiro noticed something on the hilt. In the absence of light, he could swear he saw a strange purple sigil on the hilt. “Erm, I mean yes, this is mine. Must have dropped it.”

“Ok.” The officer nodded. “Well, we’re writing this down as self-defense, so you’re free to go. Poor sod. Wonder what got into him.”

Gulping, Shiro nodded and made his way back to his apartment. He really couldn’t understand what had gotten into that other guy. Maybe he never would understand. But maybe he could figure out what the deal was with the weird knife he now, apparently, owned.

He was just starting to turn his computer on when his phone rang.

“Hello?” It was Keith, much to his surprise. “I hope I’m not calling at a bad time?”

“Nope!” No need to burden Keith with the awkward and terrible thing that just happened, Shiro decided. “No, you’re not. What’s up?”

“So…I just decided to look up about that mission you told me about. And…” Keith sounded surprised. “You’re _really_ named Takashi Shirogane? Not Shiro?”

“Yes, yes,” Shiro responded, “I am. But my friends call me Shiro.”

There was a long pause.

“Does that include me, too? You use the name Shiro when you order, so…”

“Sure, if you want.” Shiro couldn’t help smiling. Keith was just so cute. He almost made Shiro forget about the guy he saw get run over by a Mack truck. “Do you want to be friends?”

“I do.” There was, however, a note of reluctance in Keith’s tone as he said this. “I just, you know, hope I don’t drive you insane or anything. I’m not driving you insane now, right? I _shouldn’t_ be.”

This caused Shiro to burst into laughter.

“Keith,” he couldn’t help but tease before he hung up that night. “You’re a good kid, I don’t think _anything_ you do could possibly make me dislike you, much less go nuts!”

 

* * *

 

After that, things went – mostly? – back to normal.

Mostly, because Shiro would go back to the café every morning, order coffee from Keith, shoot the breeze with him, enjoy the time he had with him, then go to work, then go home. Really, he found that the more he hung out with Keith, the more he enjoyed it.

Mostly, because Shiro started noticing things. People following him, sometimes for a few blocks, sometimes all the way to and from work. The sensation of being stared at from behind started to become pervasive for him, even at home, and he kept having to check his apartment and cubicle to make sure he was alone. He was certain someone was following him, but he couldn’t really prove it, and it was starting to affect his sleep.

Speaking of his sleep, he was starting to have weird dreams. _Really_ weird dreams that were, as the days passed, feeling just a little _too_ real. Sometimes he would be in space, and the accident would happen, and he would be dragged out into space, sucked out and then grabbed by something sharp and of an interminable number of eyes and teeth. Sometimes he would be back on Earth, but the sky would be red, and the grass would be red, and he would be covered in red, and blurry black forms began to converge on him and start screaming, _and then_ —

Then there was the dream where he went to the café and it was empty. He’d go outside and the city was empty. There would be no human life, but ruined buildings and vines overgrown on everything, but when he touched the vines, they were moist and warmed and squirmed beneath him. And what about the dream where he was eating chocolate chip ice cream, but when he went to crunched down on the chips, he swallowed the tell-tale coppery taint of blood, while the ice cream seller began to writhe and scream as his tongue split into halves and quarters, down and down until untold millions of spores burst from what was left and swarmed his eyes?

It was starting to worry him just a little just how bad it was getting.

“Hey.” After one particularly long night of vivid-not-real dreams that blurred reality to a point that Shiro hadn’t been sure he still wasn’t sleeping until he stubbed his toe after getting out of bed – Keith had his piping-hot coffee ready before he even opened his mouth, his eyebrows furrowed with concern. “Are you ok?”

“Oh, yeah, good.” Shiro rubbed his eyes, hoping that the bags under his eyes weren’t too obvious. “Just had a bad dream. I dreamed I was flying over a city, and it wasn’t anything like I can remember seeing before. A city with anisotropic buildings…and giant…squid-beaver…axolotl streams that screamed whenever I took that knife and…my liver kind of—you know what, never mind about my dream. It made no sense and you don’t need to worry.”

A shadow seemed to pass over Keith’s face as Shiro rambled. If Shiro hadn’t been so sleep-deprived, he would have thought Keith’s eyes had, for a brief second, become jaundiced, his irises slitting thin like a serpent’s. Then Shiro blinked, and Keith’s eyes were back to normal and filled with concern.

“Hey, no worries, really! I’m already forgetting it!” Shiro rubbed the back of his head. He wasn’t forgetting his dreams, but Keith didn’t need to know that. “I’ll just add a bagel to my order if you don’t mind. Your choice.”

“Sure.” Keith went to the bagel troughs and grabbed the first one his hands went around. ( _Hands? Hands. No. Hand. It was one hand, wasn’t it? One hand, one limb, each side, no undulation or backwards bending as it was doing now._ ) Another blink and it was gone. “Oh, hey, Shiro?”

“Mm?”

“I was wondering.” That cute blush was back on Keith’s cheeks as he spoke. “When exactly do you get off tonight? I was wondering if we could—”

“Yes.” Shiro found himself answering before even letting him finish. “Absolutely, I’d love to. Name the place.”

Keith smiled again, bright and happy. Shiro couldn’t help but smile back; he didn’t even hear the screams outside, or the sirens as they zoomed down the street as the moments passed.

“Oh…how about that ninja-themed restaurant?” Keith nodded. “I hear they have really cool plates, even use seashells.”

“Sure.” Shiro closed his eyes and smiled. “How does seven tonight sound to you?”

“Seven pm, right?” Keith almost seemed to burst as he nodded. “Yes, yes, absolutely! I’ll see you there!”

Shiro also nodded, bidding Keith a hearty goodbye as he left the café, his step light and his air bright. His mood deflated slightly, however, when he got to work.

“ _SHIROGANE!_ ” He had barely gotten into the door when his boss got up in his face. “What the _hell_ has gotten into you? You call _this_ a review!?”

“Huh?” Oh, right. Space simulation. Bex-Box. Shiro stared blankly at his boss. “Is there a problem with what I said in it?”

“ _Yes_?” His boss shoved a pile of papers under his nose. “What _is_ this? This…this is just…you’re not on drugs, are you?”

“No, of course not!”

Shiro slowly took the papers from him, looking at him incredulously before taking a glance at his work. He’d worked extensively on it, after all, taking care to play the game for multiple hours, all the way to the very end. He went out of his way to ensure that he’d looked at the accuracy of the game in comparison to his own experience in space, along with the controls and the graphics (which his boss had taken pains to point out were top-notch before he played it.). He’d made, he was certain, the most balanced and honest game review he could make.

Which was why his blood turned to ice when he saw what was on the papers handed to him.

> _**HELP ME** _
> 
> _**SAVE ME** _
> 
> _**THE CURVED SPACES WATCH ME** _
> 
> _**ZINQUARITH** _
> 
> _**AM I** _
> 
> _**IN YOUR EYES** _
> 
> _**IN YOUR EYES** _
> 
> _**IN YOUR EYES** _
> 
> _**HELP ME** _
> 
>  
> 
> _**SAVE ME** _
> 
> _**THE CURVED SPA** _

It was the same thing, over and over, for twenty pages, until it devolved into what Shiro could only think of as button-mashing gibberish. Shiro stared at it until the papers dropped limply from his hands and scattered onto the floor.

He didn’t write that.

“Hang on. There has to be a mistake.” Shiro was quickly making his way to his cubicle. “I’ve got a copy on my desktop…”

Up his documents folder came. A single click on the _reviewbexbox2.doc_ – which he had finished the previous night – and his review popped right up.

_**HELP ME** _

His fingers mashed onto the previous version menu of his document.

_**SAVE ME**_

He didn’t write-he didn't remember writing that. He didn’t remember writing any of that.

_**THE CURVED SPACES WA** _

“I think I might have—” He felt himself start to shake. “This has got to be a mistake. I wrote a full review. I was here the entire time writing it all down. This isn’t…”

“Look, whatever.” This boss huffed. “You’re stressed out, you’re not getting sleep, and _don’t_ give me that look, I can tell you’re not sleeping. I’m not going to fire you over this, unless you keep it up. You’re one of the few space guys in this office who actually knows what he’s talking about, right?”

What that, his boss turned to leave.

“Just…get whatever you have to me by the end of the week. Ok?” His boss’s voice echoed like an anvil into Shiro’s pounding ears. “And don’t forget to hail the dead that lie in the voids beyond!”

Shiro’s head whipped around at that.

“ _What?!_ ”

“Don’t forget to e-mail the head of Rye Tech, Jake Boyd, for that interview before he’s gone.” His boss stared at him like he grew another head. Or ten. Twenty-eight hundred and thirteen. “He’s leaving for a tour of his Mars facilities? We won’t get a hold of him before next month’s deadline? Seriously, do you not remember me telling you this?”

Rolling his eyes and mumbling, Shiro’s boss left, leaving him staring at his back dumbfoundedly. This was not happening. This had to be a dream.

“Oh my god!” He could hear his co-worker squeaking. “Over eight hundred and twenty-seven people apparently spontaneously burst into flames in Times Square this _morning_!? No _wonder_ the subway was so delayed!!”

What if he _wasn’t_ dreaming, though?

 

* * *

 

After what was undoubtedly the fourth worst day of work in his life, Shiro slowly made his way to the restaurant Keith had suggested. He waited outside, cooling his heels as he did his best to ignore the feeling of being stared at by nearly every passerby he spotted. He closed his eyes, only to open them again because he kept seeing too-bright colors dance around beneath his eyelids, ones that threatened to blind him down to the nerves.

He had to calm down. He took deep breaths to stabilize himself and his heart. He wasn’t crazy. He wasn’t going crazy. At least he hoped he wasn’t.

“Shiro!” He turned to see Keith coming up to him, almost skipping towards him. “Hey! You came!”

“Sure did,” Shiro chuckled, forcing his more worrisome thoughts down. “So, shall we?”

“Oh yes.” Keith grinned, his teeth sharp like—no. Just a trick of the light, his teeth were fine. “Let’s!”

They were brought through the interminable maze of rooms and tables (an infinite spiral into eyes and secret places) by their ninja assassin hostess, who did cartwheels the entire way as they followed. Then, once they were seated heir ninja waiter took their orders, and Shiro decided to also order himself a beer. He took a swig (liquid tentacles) and downed half of it by the time he even realized it.

“This place is pretty cool, and I always wanted to eat here.” Keith looked around. “I was just afraid to come alone, so I’m glad I could come here with you.”

“Oh?” Shiro nearly belched the question, and he quickly excused himself. “Yeah, definitely, it’s got a…a vibe. A nice, not crazy at all vibe.”

“Yeah.” Shiro saw Keith’s eyes soften. “I’m especially glad I could come with you here. The other people in my life, well…I’m not always too fond of them, you know?”

Somewhere, Shiro heard a glass fall to the floor and crack, and he stiffened. Soon, it would be a million broken pieces, shattered, like the screams of the dying within the fires of that morning. He could almost hear them scream through the singing of the water spilling over the rim—

“They tend to be…overbearing.” Shiro found his thoughts coming back to Keith, as their water set out a stone on top of a wooden plank. For sharpening knives, no doubt. “They wouldn't understand any of this at all. I can’t stand it sometimes. Couldn’t. So I came here to try and get some…I don’t know, independence from them.”

“Mm.” Shiro nodded almost robotically. He was processing what Keith was saying, but he couldn’t help but feel jumpy about the broken glass. “I know what you mean. I’ve not been close to my family for some time. They didn’t exactly approve of me being at the Galaxy Garriso—”

An ear-piercing, almost pained scream seared through the air, and Shiro even saw Keith stiffen as they both turned to see what was happening. It was just a toddler having a tantrum. The mother was leading it off, giving murderous glances towards anyone who dared judge.

“…Garrison.” Nothing was wrong. Everything was fine. Just a normal dinner date. “Too Americanized, too centralized around America, and the medical care wasn't as good. They wanted me to stay in Japan.”

“Medical care in Japan?” Keith tilted his head. “Oh, I know someone who lives in Japan. Sort of? Not really, though. I guess it depends on your definition of living. Uh, lving somewhere, I mean.”

“Oh? Then he’s itinerant?”

“……Yeah, we’ll go with that.” Keith looked almost shiftily as he bent down to pick up the stone off its plank. “Itinerant.  That works. He’s definitely known to move more than people would think or wish for. He's in the Pacific last I heard.”

"I see." 

Shiro chuckled, closing his eyes as he did. When he opened them, the water had returned with an impressive back flip, along with their appetizers, but the stone was gone. Keith swallowed and innocently stared down at the table when the poor ninja asked where the stone went, before he excused himself to go get another rock.

“Yeah. Marry into another family, take over the business, get care for my illness, my parents were trying to groom me to do that."

"You're ill?"

"It's currently in remission," Shiro shrugs. "Not much else can be done for it, but I'm all right."

"Your family was trying to protect you, then?"

"In their own way. But it just wasn’t what I wanted to do. It wasn’t what I was…made for, you know?” Shiro looked down at his food as another water popped over, unsheathing a katana before slicing up the next table’s eel, then sliding the eel under the blade and placing it almost gently onto a bowl of steamed rice. “I couldn't just stay home and run a multi-billion dollar stock holding company, waiting to die. I was made to go out into space. To fly, to see what man’s never laid eyes on, or at least as few men as possible. To explore the stars and beyond.”

“I know exactly how you feel.” Keith’s eyes seemed to shine like stars as he spoke. “ _Exactly_ how you feel! I was made to explore the stars, and to fly, and—just to know the freedom that those zeroth spaces offer!”

Shiro could feel his cheeks start to warm at the enthusiasm Keith seemed to effuse as he spoke, and he quickly took another swig of his beer. When he placed it down, he saw that their soup had arrived, and their waiter had also returned with another rock, which he promptly dropped into the pot. Oh.

“Wait—” Keith brought his hand up, looking alarmed. “…won’t that make the rock soggy?”

“The rock helps to heat the soup,” the waiter said with an indulgent chortle. “Don’t worry, you do not eat the rock!”

“Mm.” Keith nevertheless looked disappointed. Shiro couldn’t help but think that he looked more adorable. “Ok. I won’t then.”

That caused the waiter to give Keith a look, before asking if Shiro needed another beer. After a moment, Shiro nodded.

“Keith, if you like space that much, you could always apply for the Galaxy Garrison.” Shiro used his arm to pour a bowl of the broth, before he passed it across to the other. “They’re always looking for new people all the time, and with time you could probably get in on a mission, too.”

“You really think so?”

“Yeah,” Shiro nodded. “Probably not Kerberos, at least, not now, but other places. The moon, Mars, maybe even Io or Titan. The sky’s no longer the limit for humans.”

Keith’s face seemed to light up for a moment, before his expression deflated just as quickly.

“Actually,” he looked down, shoulder slumped. “I don’t think that I could.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, I never, um, graduated the schools.” Keith didn’t bother with a spoon, instead slurping from his bowl. “No education or whatever they call it.”

“Well, that’s not a problem.” Shiro poured his own bowl next. “The Garrison has an accelerated GED program that you can roll into your curriculum requirements if you decide to go full-time. It’s usually reserved for younger cadets coming out of junior high that need a state certificate to get into the higher levels, but I’ve known older people who’ve—”

“I can’t go back there.”

Shiro was halfway with the ladle to the broth when Keith suddenly blurted it out. As soon as he did, his face turned cherry red.

“I mean…to the desert. The Southwest.” Keith closed his eyes. Meanwhile, the water had returned, this time with more drinks and Keith’s food – his crab sushi, tucked discreetly into seashells. “That's where it is, right? I can't do there. I don’t like it there anymore. Too much happened, I didn’t find…I’m sorry, but can we change the subject, please?”

“…of course. I didn’t mean anything by it.” Shiro’s eyebrows wrinkled in concern, but he nodded and acquiesced.  “It’s fine, though. Consider it dropped.”

As he looked down at his own food – a ribeye steak, he was so original - and picked up his chopsticks, he heard a loud crunch from the other side of the table. Both Shiro and the waiter -  who had only just set down Shiro’s food – turned to look at Keith.

“What?” Keith innocently looked at the two, before taking a sip of his drink. “It was delicious.”

Shiro blinked, before looking down at Keith’s plate. It was bare of food – and the seashells were gone as well.

  

* * *

 

After dinner was finished, Shiro offered to see Keith home. Keith demurred, but eventually – after looking over his shoulder, sighed and shrugged.

“I suppose there’s no harm.” As they walked, Keith looked up at Shiro. “Hey, Shiro?”

“Mm?”

“…Are you a virgin?”

Shiro nearly choked on his own spit at the question, hacking as he tried to recover his breath.

“Aha, that’s a bit direct?” He managed to get out. “But no, I’m not...not a virgin. May I ask why you’re wondering?”

“Because.” Keith crinkled his nose. “I don’t like virgins.”

“You don’t…” Shiro’s mind swirled at the direction this seemed to be going. “You don’t like virgins?”

“Nope. They tend to be loud and annoying whenever I meet one. Also, they smell and taste weird.” Shiro nearly died then and there when Keith looked up at him with an almost goofy smile on his face. “I’m glad you’re not a virgin, actually. I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

“Thank you?” Shiro tried _really_ hard not to laugh, either out of embarrassment or confusion. Or both, both was good. He couldn’t stop the smile from spreading on his face, nevertheless. “I’m happy you like me, because I like you too.”

Keith face softened at this, and he went to take Shiro’s hand. It felt cold and slick; not like sweat, but almost like slime. Shiro was uncertain how to describe what exactly the liquid coming from the barista’s fingers _was_.

“Do you like music?” He looked up at the sky, what little could be seen beyond the city’s lights, as they walked. The night seemed black and starless, a swirling void. “Or have a favorite TV show?”

“I love music.” Keith’s shoes scraped across the sidewalk. “Actually, it’s something in my blood, just like space.”

“Oh?”

“That’s right.” Keith nodded, bobbing his head to an unheard song. There seemed to be no beat, no rhyme, no rhythm to that his head was doing. “I used to know someone who played the flute. Everyone would dance around them as they played, spinning into eternity, their steps creating a drumbeat to keep down—”

He stopped himself from speaking further, and Shiro’s eyebrows raised.

“Urm…that’s probably not the kind of music you’d want to listen to.” Keith shook his head as if to emphasize his point. “But I also like Peter Gabriel? But probably because it was the only CD the guy driving me up here had, that and Taylor Swift.”

“Peter Gabriel?”

“Mmm hmm.”

“Uh.” Shiro racked his brain to try and think of his music. All he got was screams, of darkness, of— “Oh, yeah, he sang In Your Eyes, right? That’s a good song.”

“Yeah. I like that song.” Keith stopped walking. “I wouldn’t mind someone singing it to me. Someone I liked.”

“…You want me to sing it to you?” Shiro wagged his eyebrows, just a little. “I could now, I know all the lyrics. Surprisingly.”

Keith opened his mouth to speak, started to lean up towards Shiro, but stopped, looking behind him, then to his left.

“Actually, we’re where I live.” Before Shiro could respond, Keith had unfastened their hands and was up the stairs of a brownstone with almost dizzying speed. “We had a good night, right? We didn’t do anything crazy. You should get home right now. See you tomorrow at the café? Ok! Bye. "

Shiro blinked, and Keith wasn’t even on the stoop anymore. He hadn’t even heard Keith open or close the door. It was almost like Keith had simply vanished into thin air.

_Huh?_

He looked down at the hand Keith had held. There was a thick, viscous gunk on it, the shade being a bright amaranth. When he tried to touch it with his other hand, it seemed to first quiver as if alive, only to swirl into a near-star shape, and then dissolve into his palm and fingers with a steaming hiss. The sensation seemed to run hot, then ice cold, before Shiro was left with strange, swirling, bright red marks like fiery tendrils on his hand. Even as he watched, the brightness dimmed down to a dimmer, but still noticeable, shade of purple-red, at last crinkling up like a brand burn and being still, with no further feeling.

As Shiro’s brain tried to process what was now the strange new scar on his hand, and began to question whether he was losing what sanity he might have had, he heard a cadre of footsteps suddenly descending towards him. Blackness suddenly filled his view, and his arm was yanked out and behind him to a point where his shoulder was almost dislocated. He tried to let out a shout, only to have a hand tightly cover his mouth.

“This is him, yes?” A rough voice spoke, as Shiro felt himself being dragged backwards. He struggled to break free, but the hands holding him were strong, inhumanly so. “Takashi Shirogane.”

“ _Mmph!_ ”

They knew his name.  He kicked out, but despite the obvious close proximity of whoever was in front of him, he hit nothing. He was instead yanked further and further into the darkness by innumerable festering hands, unable to talk, unable to fight.

“The one It calls Shiro.” Another, feminine voice spoke. “The one who would take It from us.”

“We cannot have this.” The rough voice spoke again. “We shall keep favor. The Pact shall be honored. Consider this a final warning, _grah'n'bthnk_ _hlirgh_.”

He felt something sharp begin to pierce his side, near his groin.

“Separate yourself from the One that you falsely call ‘Keith’, or waste away until you scatter like dust in the wind…”

Shiro’s scream went muffled and unheard as the sharpness plunged deep into his body, and a burning sensation began to spread upwards towards his chest. It was only after the next knife plunged itself into the same area and began to carve downwards that he, blissfully, passed out.

Or maybe not so blissfully, because he dreamed soon after.  Dreamed of being strapped down as he tried to chase Keith, screaming his throat raw from the teeth as they ate him from the inside out, ripping through each organ like tissue, dissolving him until he was nothing but skin and bones and then ash bleeding black and red fire. But oh, they did not do it quickly, oh no. One piece at a time, and slowly, that was how they did it. One at a time, to make each minute feel as a year of excruciating pain…

  

* * *

 

“….ro…Shiro?”

Shiro’s eyes flew open, and he attempted to bolt upright. Attempted, because he didn’t get far. Whether it was the sedation or the lingering pain in his sides, he wasn’t sure. Still, he recognized the voice.

“Mn…” His voice was slurred as he tried to speak. “M…itch…?”

He managed to turn and see that, indeed, his old commander was sitting in the chair next to his hospital bed, arms folded, eye narrowed with disappointment. Wait. Hospital. The attack.

“Keith,” he managed to croak out. His place had been right next to where he’d been attacked, hadn’t it? They’d mentioned his name, and— “Keith, ‘s…’s he…?”

“If you’re talking about that kid that was in here sitting by your bed, he’s gone.” Iverson gruffly pointed towards the door. “Left hours ago, once he found out you’d be more or less ok. Told me to give you a message.”

“M’ssage…?”

“That’s right. Hope you’re cognizant enough to understand the words coming out of my mouth, because I won’t repeat it.” The elder cleared his throat. “‘I can’t see you anymore or ever again. I’m sorry, this wasn’t supposed to happen. Please don’t try and find me now. Stay away for your own good and they won’t bother you. I promise.’”

There was a long pause.

“No, that…” Maybe he was in denial. Maybe it was the drugs. Maybe it was both. Shiro slowly shook his head. “I…no, wasn’t…wasn’t his fault…j'st a gang jump.”

“Oh, sure,” Iverson huffed incredulously. “It’s not _his_ fault you got kidneyed by his gang and left for dead. It’s not your fault you’ve lost twenty pounds during the thirty hours he was sitting by your bedside. I heard him apologizing for his ‘followers’.”

That caused Shiro to stop and stiffen. Not the lost twenty pounds part, though – the _other_ part.

“What?”

“You heard me, golden boy.”

“Follow…ers?...sure?”

“Yes I’m sure! I have ears, you know.” Mitch slapped his hand to his head. “Naked Jesus tap dancing on a corpse, but what have you gotten yourself into? Do you even _know_ what you’ve gotten into?”

“What?”

“…A _cult_ , Shiro.” Iverson spoke slowly. “I got called here to the ICU, took a red-eye out here, because you were nearly killed by a _cult_. A crazy, goat-killing, baby-eating, makes-up-their-own-bull-language cult that I heard the kid confessing to knowing about. These people have been wreaking havoc and murdering people across the United States for their god in the past 20 years, and the FBI’s been chasing them since last year! Hell, kid’s probably one of them!”

“…What?”

Shiro stared at Iverson, feeling his insides swim as he talked. He tried to think of a proper rebuttal to his former superior’s accusations in his addled mind, because Keith could be many things, but a member of a killer cult?

“’re you sure?”

“Where has your head _been_? Are you that blind?” Mitch groaned. “No, I’m just making it up because I have _such_ an intense interest in you and your love life— _yes of course I’m sure_!”

“Why?” Shiro groaned, his hand sluggishly going to his side. It hurt to touch. “Keith…he never…he would never.”

“Well, whether or not you think he would ever, someone he knows sure did.” The commander sighed, shaking his head. “Did a real number on you too. Just promise me you won’t freak out the next time you look down where your digestive system used to be. Or look in a mirror. Or have a nurse come in and look at you funny. You might have said some things while you were under sedation.”

“Mmnn.” Shiro did the best eyeroll he could under the circumstances. “Won’t panic.”

“I’m serious.” Mitch held his hands up. “You look awful and you’re lucky to be alive right now.”

Shiro didn’t respond to that. He didn’t feel particularly lucky. Not with what he was just given by Keith.

_I can’t see you anymore or ever again._

Shiro could never imagine Keith saying such a thing to him, not willingly. Keith would never put him in danger like that. True, strange things had been happening, and Shiro had noticed a slightly slip in his sanity recently. But that couldn’t have been Keith. Keith was a good guy, gentle and kind, and Shiro liked him a lot and trusted him enough to know that Keith would never do anything to harm him.

_Right?_

“You’ll figure out what’s happening soon enough, I’ll make sure of it. Hey, nurse?” As Shiro ruminated in his thoughts, “Does this place have pizza? Or do you know a place that serves it? I think I could use a piece. A good slice of _real_ NYC pizza, not the bland crap they serve in the chain stores….can I at least get a phone number for a place? Geez…”

 

* * *

 

For the next four days, and even after Shiro was released to go home, weakened as he was from the attack, it rained. It wasn’t normal rain, though, because apparently nothing was normal anymore. No – it was raining blood. Gross, almost-brown blood, and the city at large was starting to smell terrible because of it. While Mitch Iverson chose to believe (that, or Shiro assumed he was pretending to believe it, because the man _had_ been a veteran of war and wasn’t an idiot) the rain was just saturated with chemicals, Shiro knew what he was seeing, and feeling. He couldn’t help but shudder as he was brought home and was forced to discard his blood-stained clothing – already gamey from being stabbed in them and then stuffed inside a police evidence bag for a week - in a washer full of MoxieClean.

(No evidence, the police informed him. No witnesses, either. It was like they simply vanished into the ether.)

It was after he got out of his clothing and went to take a shower that he got a good look at himself. He nearly fell at the sight in the mirror – he looked pale, almost white, and gaunt in a way that he’d never been before, even at his sickest. (Nearly thirty pounds. _waste away until you scatter_ echoed as he watched his clothing hang on him. _)_ He had a long scar across his face, and the sclera in his eyes were ringed with a black that didn’t seem to fade. It was like having inverted kohl on his eyeballs, if with each blink said kohl seemed to shift and squiggle _just_ slightly like worms.  

Not the rest of his sclera were any better – they were yellowed as if with jaundice. Which made some sense, as apparently his attackers took out part of his liver along with his kidney. Which – speaking of – he found and unbandaged the spot where he’d been shanked. Not just shanked – practically marked with what looked to be an inverted, uneven pentagram with lines and other various patterns within. It seemed to burn like absolute ice whenever his fingers went anywhere near it; it was also still dripping blood even after a week, its leaking in tune with an unseen rhythm that seemed to be every other minute or so. It was _painful_ , to say the least.

All in all, it was worse than when he was dying back on Kerberos. At least he still had both kidneys when he was in space.

Shiro winced, then threw his hand up when every attempt to re-bandage himself with his one arm failed. He instead opted to press a towel up against his side as he stumbled back into his living room. He could get more stain remover from the nearest bodega if he needed to. First, though, he needed to contact Keith. He needed to figure out what on Kerberos' bare-butt surface was going on.

He dialed the only number he knew to call for information on him – the café. The woman who answered confirmed that there had never been anyone named Keith employed there since the place opened – which she would have known, as she was the manager and owner.

 _Great._ Shiro puffed his cheeks and let out a huff as he hung up. _Already back to square one._

He hobbled over to his couch, slowly and painfully sitting on it and placing the towel where it would catch all of the blood. That was when he spotted the pile of folders on his coffee table, and the sticky note attached to the top of the closest of the manila files. Slowly, he picked up the note and scanned it over.

**_READ THIS.- Mitch_ **

Frowning, Shiro picked up the first folder. Its flap said ZINQARITH 1. He slowly opened it up.

He was faced with a glossy black-and-white picture of Keith. Not the Keith he knew – a smaller, younger Keith, one who barely looked to be in his teens. He looked sullen and bored, and seemed to be dressed in a billowing choir robe. He was surrounded by a group of other, older figures, all dressed in cloaks like his, albeit adorned with strange symbols. One of the figures, in particular, seemed to wear a strange, Y-shaped amulet around their neck, and was much taller than everyone else in the photo, though other details seemed impossible to make out of who it was. No faces could be seen under any of the hoods - the detail on the photo was simply black, with no gradient to indicate anything at all beneath.

He shuddered as he read the caption typed beneath the photo. ZINQARITH INITIATION, UNKNOWN LOCATION, DATE UNKNOWN.

Initiation. Like into a—

No. He wanted to deny it. He couldn’t - the proof was _right there_ , the very first thing he read. He felt his shoulders deflate. Then it was true. Keith was a part of a cult of some kind, part of something bad. He brought his hand to his mouth as he let the photo drop to the floor.

_I’m sorry. This wasn’t supposed to happen._

He closed his eyes.

_Please don’t try and find me now._

He felt tears sting his eyes. They felt heavy and thicker than normal tears, and when he went to wipe his eyes, he felt something smudge that wasn’t water on his fingers.

_Stay away for your own good._

He brought his fingers down, staring at the black droplets of ooze on his fingers.

_…No._

This couldn’t be it. This...what was happening to him couldn’t be because of the Keith he knew and cared for and had…feelings for. Feelings. No, he felt something more than just feelings for him – he was just being an idiot about it, because he needed to tell Keith these things, and needed to hear from Keith himself what was going on.

He’d probably be even more of an idiot if he also didn’t at least look through what else Mitch had given him. Even if it turned out that Keith was somehow some kind of psycho cult member, Shiro at least wanted to make sure he was prepared with facts when – if – he had the chance to confront Keith with this information.

He had to know more.

He looked over to the file and picked up the next picture. This time, it was a color photo of a baby boy.

ZINQARITH DAVIS MOUNTAINS RETREAT.

It looked an awful lot like a crying, red-cheeked, baby-sized Keith, with wisps of black hair gently cradling its face.

DATE UNKNOWN.

Its pupils were slit like snakes, its sclera was yellow, and the blanket beneath it seemed lumpy and dark red. Amaranth. Yellow runes seemed to glow in the background, but only _just_ seemed – someone had, during the development of the photo, taken great care to blur the background of the moment as much as possible. As it was, even with that blurriness Shiro could feel a headache abruptly start behind his eyes.

He quickly looked down at the baby again and was suddenly struck with a thought. The blanket seemed too splayed, too uneven, too smooth to be a blanket, or even cloth, despite it seeming to be bunching all up around to near the nape of the bottom of the infant’s back. Indeed, the red item reminded him of tako. Octopus.

That was when he realized that the baby wasn’t inside a blanket at all, and he let out a startled cry as he dropped the photo. No, those weren’t blankets at _all_.

 

* * *

 

The more he pored through the files that day and the next, the less upset he became. The less upset he became, the more the empty space left behind was filled with fear and terror.

The cult, from what he could read – as all he could read was apparently all anyone had been able to put down before they became either lost to madness or just plain dead – was dedicated to what was called dozens upon dozens of abhorrent epithets. The Abyssal Unending. The Great Flawless. The Vrepit-Sa Dan. The Should Never Have Been, The Flame of Dread, The Amaranth Vision, The Star Spawn Lost, The Dream Electric. It was a being the cult claimed was born in a place beyond space-time, a being that deigned to give even the slightest thought to the puny mortal races of reality.

However, one paper gave a more direct name to the object of worship: Zi’nqar’ith. Just thinking the name seemed to cause the black in Shiro’s eyes to randomly leak alongside the bloodied brand, to the point where Shiro ended up running out of tissues to wipe his face with. It also seemed to cause the storm clouds outside to darken into a sickly purple, if only for a moment.

However, _that_ was a minor annoyance in comparison to the horrors that the files claimed the cult was into. Baby-eating and goat-killing was apparently a routine thing that was common practice with the higher-ups of the group, what with the whole ‘normal humans are puny ants’ philosophy. There was even a document that went into detail about their hunting for goats. ( _Thanks, Mitch_ , Shiro thought weakly.) Everywhere the cult went and seemed to settle, random horrible things reportedly happened without explanation, affecting the weather and the people within the area. Spontaneous combustion, random solar eclipses, and other impossible abnormalities dotted a timeline that spanned decades, in places in the Southwest and Texas and beyond.

Not that people didn’t try to stop all of this from happening, obviously - there were many who had. However, those who attempted to expose the cult or interfere with it were killed, maimed, or simply disappeared. Those who didn’t go through that – including, apparently, every federal agent sent to infiltrate the cult to try and stop them - instead slowly descended into a deep and incurable madness. Despite this, the cult always seemed to vanish whenever the scrutiny - and the authorities - started to home in on them, with almost every trace of it gone, as if it never existed, no matter how deep one tried to dig. The only evidence was whatever was in the folders in front of him, now.

The leader of the cult, meanwhile, seemed particularly obsessed with sacrificing young female virgins to their supposed god, on every so-called half-rotation of the third Carcosan sunset, in a bid to fulfill what was believed to be a means for ascension to an elevated status in the eyes of the god. Which, after everything else Shiro was reading, seemed the sanest practice the cult engaged in so far. Or maybe Shiro really _was_ sliding into insanity faster than those federal agents had, that was also possible.

However, it also made something Keith asked circle back to making complete sense to Shiro in the present.

 _I’m glad you’re not a virgin, actually. I knew there was a reason I liked you._  

Keith had mentioned not liking virgins. If he didn’t like virgins, he couldn’t be the leader of the cult. If he wasn’t the leader of the cult—

Shiro took a deep breath. Yes, the logic was probably...no, there probably was no logic in his reasoning, and yet at the same time that thought gave him a kind of clarity about the situation. Keith didn’t look like he wanted to be there in that first picture, after all.

 _I can’t go back there_.

Keith was trying to protect him from those people. If Keith was _really_ as bad as this cult claimed to be, Keith wouldn’t have done something so simple and decent. Slowly, Shiro exhaled.

_I have to find him._

Thinking that made the mark on his side hurt and bleed all over his couch, but Shiro didn’t care. He slowly went to his feet.

_I have to save him. Somehow._

That was when he spotted the blinking light on his computer table, a near-neon purple that seemed to sear upwards to the ceiling every time the light appeared. Brows furrowed, Shiro wobbled over to the table to find the source of the strange light.

He let out a gasp as he alighted on the source.

_Of…_

It was coming from hilt of the blade he’d gotten from the first attack on him, so many weeks ago; the strange symbol that Shiro had maybe seen was now brightening and dimming in rhythm with his bleeding wound.

_…course!_

The Americano-buying man who had jumped in front of the truck – after he had been disarmed of the blade, he said something called the Great Falseness, and then stepped out into the street for the last time.

It had been the first attempt on his life by the cult. It must have been, Shiro realized. Now, in time with his wound, the blade was flashing, something it had never done before. He brought the blade up into his hand, directly staring at the symbol.

It made his eyes ooze up again, also in rhythm with the blood and the light. Well, _that_ had been a bad thing to do. Still it gave him an idea. The blade had never reacted before, and it certainly hadn’t started to do that before when he’d come back home, hours before.

He looked outside and saw that the clouds – and this the sky, was turning a darker grey, turning the blood into near-black lines streaking across his window. The day was ending. The sun was setting.

 _So, it’s every half-rotation of the…third…caucusing…that…you know what, never mind._ Shiro painfully put the blade into his belt while he commenced re-dressing himself in significantly less bloody clothing. _I’m going to find you, Keith, and I’ll make sure you never have to deal with these guys ever again._

With that, he nodded in determination, and made his way out the door. Only to go back in a moment later, shaking his head.

 _Forgot to lock the door. Forgot my keys. Forgot my wallet._ God _I’m an idiot._

Of all the things to worry about when the guy you liked was in mortal danger, right?

 

* * *

 

Using the blade as a wayfinder was practically idiot-proof, even when darkness had fallen over the city and the lampposts were glitching fierce, plunging parts of the city into complete darkness for minutes at a time. The blade still shined, overwhelming all other light in the immediate area, whenever he took it out to look at it.

If only Shiro wasn’t an idiot. When Shiro went in one direction, the blinking seemed to fade. Going another made it strengthen. With that much ascertained, Shiro reasoned he should be going the way that made the light stronger. It was just a question of how he’d actually get to where he was going, when he didn’t otherwise have a clue what he was doing. The thickening blood rain wasn’t helping either, and within a block he was completely soaked in red from head to toe.

As he stumbled around in the hellish weather, he came upon a bus stop. There were two old women there, both sitting with hunched backs on the benches inside the bus shelter, both wearing see-through rain bonnets stained with dark, dried blood.

“Oh.” He looked up at the bus sign, before looking down at the elderly women. Some of the bus lines seemed to be going the way he was headed, at least. “Excuse me. Can you tell me when the next bus is coming?”

“ _What?_ ”

“The next bus?”

“Yes.” Shiro pressed his hand against where the blade was tucked. “Please. It’s urgent, I need to get somewhere fast. Do you know?”

“Oh my God, what happened to your arm?” The younger-looking of the two put a hand to her chest. “Are you one of those veterans? God bless you.”

“Dolores,” the elder-looking one clicked her tongue. “Look at all this awful rain, wouldn’t you just look at it. Just terrible.”

“Yes, excuse me, Terry, I’m talking to this nice young man here,” the younger-looking one shook her head as she nevertheless gave Shiro a patronizing smile. “So did you go to Iraq? My grandson was in Iraq for two whole tours. Marine, right? You look like a Marine. I bet you both crossed paths.”

“…Galaxy Garrison, actually,” Shiro shook his head. “I hate to be a bother, ma’am, but do you know when the next bus—”

“Oh, so that space force in Arizona? I lived in Arizona back in the fifties!” The younger laughed. “Oh, there was nothing there back then, nothing but desert and heat and it was just so _hot_ there!”

“This rain.” The elder one turned to face the younger. “Dolores, would you look at this rain? It’s all the wrong color and it stinks to high heaven!”

“Terry!” The younger’s voice became sharp. “I am _talking_ , don’t be rude—”

“But Dolores, the _rain_ —”

Shiro had the feeling he wasn’t going to get anywhere with this unless he did or said something drastic.

“Please! I need to know what routes go this way, right now. The person I love needs me.”

Or cheesy. Cheesy worked as well. Both women were now looking at them.

“Why are you stopping talking to us?” The younger laughed. “Go find her, then!”

“Him.”

“Oh, whatever. Just go!” The younger waved him off. “Buses aren’t going to run in weather like this! You’re better off walking backwards.”

“God is punishing us for our sinful ways, you know.”

Shiro had barely taken a half-step when he sputtered at the elder’s words. He looked over to her and watched as she shook her head with a _tsk_. He swallowed the bile in his throat, hoping the elder of the two wasn’t going to say what he thought she was going to say.

“Well? Why do you think this rain is _brown_ , Dolores? This is God shitting on us. He’s so upset with us and the way we’re headed that he’s shitting on us.” Now the older was rambling. “He’s not even going to end the world, he’s just going to shit all over us until we die.”

This caused the younger of the women to whip her head towards her partner, her eyes wide like Os and her mouth practically dropping to her feet.

“—righthankyouforyouhelpbye.”

This was clearly not a conversation Shiro needed to get involved with, so he began walking again, in the direction the blade was hopefully guiding him towards. As he did so, he could see the bus coming out of the corner of his eye.

“Terry! What the hell is wrong with you!” He heard the ensuing shouting even as the bus let out a very loud squeal while breaking. “First off, the rain is red, And _furthermore_ , God doesn’t _have_ a sphincter, you damn heathen!”


	2. Ee

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may have added some scenes to the prior chapter. About 3,000 words worth of 'some'. Oops.
> 
> On a side note, I do not claim to be a Cthuvian language expert and anyone who does should never ever be trusted. Madness makes everyone an authority, after all.

It took another hour for Shiro to find the place, which happened to be the brownstone that he’d walked Keith home to. By the time he got there, he was exhausted, blood-soaked, and breathing heavily, but triumphant. He looked down at the blade in his hands; the glyph in the hilt was of such a bright, intense purple that it was practically red.

_This has got to be the place._

He went to open the door, only to find that the door opened on its own. He slowly entered the bare, dusty interior of the lobby, the bloody soles of his shoes squeaking against the hardwood floors. Even in the darkness, he could see the cobwebs on the corners of the ceiling, the spiders lazily threading thick silk even as they watched him with multiple eyes ( _always watched, he is always watched_ ).

His breath quickened. There was nothing there but a cold fireplace, and the house seemed to have been abandoned and uninhabited in for years.

_Keith…_

He looked at the blade as he slowly approached the barren mantle above the stone-cold firebox. The color of the symbol was no longer red, but now, a bright, blazing yellow. It was like staring straight into the sun. As he breathed in through his nostrils, he could almost taste the pungent, sweet smell of something that seemed to combine burning mildew and rotting meat.

No, he _couldn’t_ be wrong.

His hands brushed along the carved marble of the mantelpiece, tracing what looked to be a stylized, albeit warped, octopus, its tentacles unfurled over and around the center of the mantelpiece, until then finish curling down over the sides of the lintels. Seeing it made his heart beat as fast as a train wheel could rotate, thumping hard in his chest.

In the center of the ornament was a mouthpiece, thin, long and ovate. Shiro held up the blade, looked at the thickness of it, then decided why the hell not. It was a creepy house, and it seemed to be the only thing that made sense.

He pressed the blade into the mouth. It slid in perfectly, and Shiro twisted his wrist until the mouthpiece turned along with his movement.

_Come on—!_

The ornament suddenly sprung to life, a dozen eyes popping open where before there had been none visible before. The entire mantelpiece suddenly blazed with a bright amaranth haze, and the firebox sprang to life with a burst of flames, before Shiro hear a loud clang beneath him, and the blade was spit back out into his hands.

Slowly, the fireplace slid sideways.

_Finally!_

He could hear the gears and cogs of machinery groan. It was the clicking sound of a pulley system doing its work.

_Finally…_

Very, _very_ slowly.

_…Finally?_

Shiro licked his lips, re-sheathed his blade, and put his hands in his pockets. After what felt like five minute he found himself swaying back and forth and tapping his toes to try and keep himself from jumping down the shaft. And also to try and keep himself awake.

After what felt like ten eternities, a large metal freight elevator finally rose up from the darkness of the shaft, docking with a bell-like _DONG_.

_FINALLY._

Shiro threw his hands up and stepped into the elevator. One would think that a cult could afford better technology – or just make a magical elevator if they were capable of such wizardry as what was happening outside – but apparently not.

Or that they could get better music, because as the elevator very slowly closed its doors behind him, a new insanity began to drill into Shiro’s brain: muzak. It wasn’t even good muzak – it was some attempt at light jazz, but in a strange, uneven timbre that buzzed like large, angry wasps in Shiro’s ears.

It was taking forever. Maybe the ride was intentionally trying to drive him mad, like everything around him apparently was now. With a shudder, Shiro embraced himself with his arm.

_I can do this. This is for Keith._

He closed his eyes, doing his best to clear his mind of everything but Keith and getting to Keith. It was a difficult proposition, given he couldn’t help but think of the possible terrors that could be overcoming him at that very moment. What if he abruptly burst into flames? What if he was eaten by a monster of unknown provenance? What if he found Keith and all he spoke was complete gibberish?

There was thankfully another _DONG_ , and Shiro slowly stepped out of the elevator as he stepped out.

_Oh my god._

The enormous subterranean cave he was not standing in should have been impossible with the geography of New York City, and yet here he was, a small ant inside a massive cavern of smooth brown and green-flecked rocks and spires of brilliant red. They shot up land outwards and inwards like an uncontrolled fire caught in mid-motion in stone, surrounded by what Shiro could think of as sheer cliffs, if they had been twisted around and inverted like mere putty.

He knew, though, that they were not cliffs, not like he knew them, and that creating such structures were impossible. The stones, the angles, they made no sense. When he blinked, the way the dim lights within the cavern caught the colors changed, and even the precise hue of red that flanked this secret place seemed to be in eternal flux. To touch the rock was no better – it was like touching ice dryer and hotter than hydrogen, and it almost sizzled beneath Shiro’s finger when he scraped against it. The soles of his shoes scraped on what sounded like chalk sliced across a jagged chalkboard.

Nothing in this cave felt right. _Shiro_ didn’t feel right. It was like the dreams he’d had tried to describe to Keith, but found no way to without devolving into nonsense, but for real. This place shouldn’t have existed, and he was stepping in uninvited.

Maybe he shouldn’t have come here after all.

 

**_y’Zi’nqar’ith_ **

 

Oh, and the sudden ominous chanting of a hundred distorted voices echoing in Shiro’s mind wasn’t helping his state of mind, either.

 

**_y’Zi’nqar’ith orr'e’Yidhra_ **

 

 _Really_ not helping.

Shiro had to stop, had to keep himself from hyperventilating, or at least not doing so loud. He could feel his wound burn from each syllable, could feel his eyes drip steady and uncontrollable. This was not working out well. He was trying to _surprise_ these people, after all. Emphasis on trying, because he worried he might have already been found out of they were speaking in his head – whoever exactly ‘they’ were.

 

**_cllll sll'ha, y’hah, y’hah…_ **

 

The chant continued, regardless of Shiro’s ever-mounting panic. He knew then and there that he was woefully unprepared for whatever he was about to face.

 

 **_Tharanak_ ** **_y’Zi’nqar’ith cnog_ **

**_‘aiy’Zi’nqar’ith cah_ **

**_K’na y’Zi’nqar’ith cthrod_ **

**_y’Zi’nqar’ith ys'uhn_ **

**_y’fm'latgh_ **

**_y’hah, y’hah_ **

 

He could feel the meaning of the words clawing up his neck and rattling. He could sense the twisted supplication, could taste the dread of their worship and devotion as their shouts came to a shrill inverted cacophony of inhuman shrieks.

 

**_y’Zi’nqar’ith fm'latgh mnahn' hlirgh!_ **

**_y’Zi’nqar’ith ch'nw hafh'drn!_ **

**_y’Zi’nqar’ith fm'latgh uh'e wfaqa!_ **

**'ai’ai'ai'ai’ai**

 

He opened his mouth and let out a scream as he clawed his temples with his hand.

 

**‘AI’AI’AI’AI’AI’AI**

 

He nearly lost it completely, then and there.

_Keith._

Then he remembered his smile, the pink that bloomed on his face when he seemed happy, the way those seashells disappeared without explanation during their first…date? Shiro wouldn’t have minded it to be a first date – the beginning of something deeper, if Keith would be amenable to it after this.

Suddenly, nothing was hanging as harshly over him, and the world he had jumped into didn’t seem so terrible as before. It was still god awful, and his felt still felt like it was sliced open like a watermelon with all the thought waves coming to his very novice noodle, but Shiro at least had something else to focus on again aside from everything else happening around him.

Slowly he made his way, doing his best to ignore ( ** _ch’y’Zi’nqar’ith_** ) the repeated chants and ( ** _ph’_** ** _n'gha csll'ha_** ** _Zi’nqar’ith_** ) ritual words to their ( ** _Zi’nqar’ith cgof'nn vulgtlagln_** ) apparent god that were rattling in his head, despite their echoes becoming stronger and harder to push back as he came closer to what felt like the source of the emanating vocals.

The chanting didn’t stop until he was finally closing in on what he hoped was where he needed to go. _y’hah_ , he thought without understanding what he just said, much less even realizing it.

At last he found himself standing in the shadow of two massive pillars – the only two structures that looked normal in any form to Shiro’s sensibilities. They looked Egyptian, albeit with the strange octopus-like tentacles adorning the capitals at the top. The glowing golden runes that adorned the sides of the shafts were also certainly different from any hieroglyphs he saw in social studies back in school. Just looking at them caused sharp pains to ricochet through his corneas and straight to the back of his neck.

Instead he decided to look at what was happening beyond the pillars, and he nearly jumped out into the open at the sight.

There was a poor, naked young woman splayed spread-eagle on what looked like a jagged wheel straight out of a badly-drawn tarot card. The wheel itself wasn’t even supported by anything, it was just floating several inches off the ground, slowly rotating on its own volition. On her stomach was a star symbol, much like his own, and it was steaming hot and dripping blood onto the ground, where it was being collected inside what looked to be an even bigger rune, this one inlaid deep into the floor. Shiro’s touched his own bleeding wound beneath his thoroughly soaked shirt at the sight – his own involuntary token of solidarity for the poor woman.

“Um…” Despite looking like she’d been through the ringer – she had noticeable bags under her eyes, her skin was practically sallow, and she was clearly too weak to struggle against her bonds due to who-knew-what else was done to her – she still had the wherewithal to try and plead for her life as her eyes rolled up to look at the blood. Shiro nodded as he slowly began to unsheathe the knife once more. Keith or no, she needed to be saved as well. “Please…please don’t do this? You need _really good_ virgin blood, right? Because my blood sucks. I have…I have anemia!”

Nothing.

“A-a clotting deficiency! It could get really, _really_ messy and then you’d have to…clean up…wait…”

Cold silence was her answer.

“Hemophilia!? Uh…come on, give me something to work with here, oh god oh _God someone help me!_ …”

Shiro had just taken a step forward to take such an action when, suddenly, the cloaked figures appeared like in smoke, all in black with amaranth lining on their robes. Their faces were all concealed by impenetrable shadow, and they all converged on the wheel. All save one, whose long white hair cascaded like thin straw from beneath her more ornate, off-black and flame-tipped robes.

There was no sign of Keith.

 ** _Zi’nqar’ith uln!_** It was the feminine voice from the attack coming from the cloak. She – was it a she? – raised clawed cerulean hands upwards in supplication, her voice deep and gnarled from centuries of use. Or smoking, but probably not. ** _Ng'goka cgotha!_**

The cultists dispersed outside the circle of the massive in-ground rune, and the feminine-voiced one stepped forward, a blade just like Shiro’s in their hand, waiting until the psychic echo had waned.

“Oh Emptiness.” Unlike the previous words, the woman’s words instead came from her mouth. Thank goodness? “Oh Great Falseness, You who yet burns all to show us truth. Honor this sacrifice, so we may complete the gateway to the realm Beyond whence You came. The time has come for Your greatest treasure to be bequeathed with your infernal grace, that he may see the great Never-Waking Itself, and feel his soul rent asunder.”

 _Please._ The other figures with the coats slowly moved in a rhythmic sway. Still no sign of Keith. Shiro felt cold sweat form on his brow. _Don’t be dead, Keith._

“Let him be tempered and shaped by the song as your reflection, let him return with a note of the flute; let its incomprehensible music play on his reborn tongue.”  Shiro tensed as the woman on the wheel trembled under the figure’s touch on her chin. When the blue claws lifted, there was a burn the shape of a thumbprint. “With this sacrifice he shall place himself on this altar, so he might be at Your side forever and ever. _y’hah_ , Never-Failing, fulfill this Pact most foul and join with your most belo—”

**- _NAFLMG!-_**

Everything instantly stopped with an abrupt howl of beastly, ancient rage. Shiro let out a gasp, stumbled backwards at the sheer power of the words in his mind. As if compelled to obey by the sudden _pull_ on the wound on his side, Shiro looked over in time to see the wheel blown away from the center of the ritual, with the woman letting out a squeal of terror during the ride.

“Eeeeeek—I’m getting sick agaaaain!”

When the wheel cleared, there was another cloaked figure in the center of the blood rune. Shiro recognized the amulet around his neck – in the cavern, the strange, gold, Y-shaped boon seemed to glow with unholy red light. There was no doubt this was the man who had attacked him before – and he was also the leader of the cult, or at least someone of significant importance to these people. They were also twice Shiro’s height and three times bigger in terms of muscular structure.

 _No, wait._ Shiro could feel his pants start to slide, and he found himself quietly sighing and cursing that he didn’t have a belt to hold them up. _Make that four times bigger now, I guess._

“Holy Zarkon!” Instantly, everyone was on their knees, their heads to the ground. The white-haired supplicant stood up immediately after. “What has happened? Why have you stopped the ritual?”

 ** _-BECAUSE HE IS_ HERE _.-_** Even with his normal voice, ‘Zarkon’ was booming to the point of the ground shaking, and his commanding tone crawled like scorpions within the mind. **- _HE’S STANDING RIGHT BEHIND YOU ALL. WHY DID YOU NOT_ KILL HIM _ALREADY?!-_**

“What?!” There was a psychic murmur of the word among the followers. “The _hlirgh_ is here!?”

Shiro felt himself slide furtively behind a pillar, because he knew exactly who was being talked about. He may not have understood the language, but he remembered the world, and he remembered when he it was spoken of to him. He swallowed as the ground shook with the new guy’s mere step.

Oh, but he _really_ underestimated this situation.

“I…” The female voice hissed. “I cannot sense the mark, Holy Zarkon.”

 **- _I CAN.-_** Another step, this time towards Shiro’s hiding spot ** _._ _-LITTLE HUMAN. DO YOU REALLY THINK YOU CAN STOP DESTINY? DO YOU THINK YOU CAN BREAK THE PACT THAT I, ZARKON, HAVE FORGED FOR—_**

“What the hell are you guys doing!?”

Shiro’s head bolted up at a new voice which suddenly echoed in the chamber. It sounded annoyed, tired and even bored, but he would know the owner of that voice anywhere.

“ ** _KEITH!_** ”

Without even thinking, Shiro re-sheathed his weapon and stumbled out of his hiding place. He landed inside the chamber before realizing what exactly he was doing. All of the cultists’ heads instantly snapped to his position, and he slapped his head at his rashness.

“Oh my god, I can’t believe I just _did_ that.”

“Shiro?!”

He was there. Keith was there, and alive, and unharmed. Also, he was completely naked. Shiro felt roses bloom hot and fast on his cheeks at the sight before he could shake his head and focus on the situation at hand.

“Keith.” Shiro took a step forward. Felt his wound suddenly stab with a level of pain it hadn’t before – in other words, it hurt even _more_. “ _Augh_ —I mean, are you ok?”

“I—you—f course _I’m_ ok!” Keith walked forward to Shiro’s side; no one stopped him. “What are _you_ doing here!? I told you to stay away from me! Now you look like skin and bones!”

“Well, that's because I _am_ skin and bones right now, but Keith, I— _ngh_ —that’s not important! Why do you _think_ I’m here?” The sharpness in his side increased tenfold, and Shiro nearly doubled over. “I’m here to take you away from these people!”

“Um, hello?” Shiro heard the woman mumbling to his side. “Just him? What about me? I’m the one being virgin-sacrificed here for the wedding!”

“Yes, I know that, give me a seco _AAH **AH**_ —!” Another spike that went through to his lungs, and Shiro was on one knee. He severely regretted charging in without a plan now, injured as he was. “I’m…I’m going to get you too, ma’am, I didn’t know you were here! But…Keith, I came here to save you. You don’t have to be a part of this cult anymo _wait_ what wedding.”

Those words broke the silence of the cultists, who, to Shiro’s confusion, started howling with merriment, both in throat and in mind. Shiro grit his teeth to again try and block the unwanted mental assault.

 ** _-'SAVE' HIM.-_** Zarkon’s mocking purr also echoed through his mind, which he couldn’t block no matter what he tried. **- _DID YOU HEAR THAT, MY CHILDREN? AND WHAT SAY_ YOU _, DEAR HEART? TAKASHI SHIROGANE WISHES TO…SAVE YOU.-_**

“Wh—” 

Shiro could almost feel Keith take a step back at this, and the pain from the searing mark seemed to suddenly lessen as the other did so. Somehow he could sense the shaking anger – the helplessness? – coming from him. 

**_-HE REALLY CAME HERE BELIEVING HE WAS DOING SOMETHING_ WORTHWHILE _. TRULY HE IS A FOOL.-_**

Keith let out a choked sound at this, staring at Shiro with wide eyes.

“You...you really don't..." Keith's apoplectic words and tone came out through gnashed teeth. " _Shiro_ , you _idiot_! You want to know why I’m here?! Why you _can't_ save me? Look at me!”

Shiro looked up towards Keith’s face, opening his mouth to try and ask why he was calling him an idiot for wanting to save him. The reason was simple – it was just a question of three words, four if he added a ‘because’. Maybe a few dozen others if he wanted to explain in more detail what he saw in Keith, which was what he decidedly did not see in this group of satanic worshipers.

" _Lo **ok**_!"

His voice immediately died in his throat when he saw the hurt and worry in Keith’s eyes – all 62 of them, as they started to pop open asymmetrically all over his body, from head to toe, all of them turning to focus on Shiro with sharp, slit pupils. No sound came out as Keith’s limbs began to elongate and sharpen to slick red points that began to wriggle on the ground, followed by a sickening snap and a zippering, squelching noise that came from his spine. A dozen more not-quite-violet limbs of a like nature snaked forward from where they had undressed Keith’s back, quivering within a foot of Shiro. A dozen and four of them in all, cascading and cocooning around his small meat-like suit of a human body.

Just like the photo of the baby with what Shiro had, at first, thought was a blanket.

His marked wound began to gush torrents of dark red, and the black worms in his eyes suddenly grew fatter and leaked waterfalls of inky void onto him.  In the amount of time it took to blink his mind began to rip itself apart from even this small glimpse of that piece of infinite truth – an infinite _nothing_ where action was pointless and existence was meaningless – that his unprepared mind was wholly unable to defend itself against. He screamed, but it was an unheard scream save for what he and the thing that was Keith could fathom. The reality of just what he had walked into, what he thought he was trying to save, was a fire without heat in his mind. The vastness of space without any wonder or excitement in his soul to behold it.

Keith did not need saving from the cult of Zi’nqar’ith, his rapidly decaying mind screamed. He was the cult of Zi’nqar’ith, _was Zi’nqar’ith_ , and Should Not Be and Never Have Been. _Stupid._

He could hear his thoughts erase themselves, then pull back together, only to explode once more.

_Stupid. Stupid. stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid mnahn' mnahn'_

_**-Shiro.-** _

_mnahn' mnahn' mnahn' mnahn' MNAHN’_

**-Shiro.-** He could barely comprehend, much less hear, half of the dimensional rends through which Keith’s distorted voice spoke. **- _Do I_ look _like something you should be_ saving _, Shiro?-_**

_MNAHN’ MNAHN’ MNAHN’ MNAHN’ **MNAHN’ MNAHN’ MNAHN’**_

He was being pulled under. It didn’t matter that he was in any case. He was nothing. It had all been nothing. A lie. False. His kind smile his happy blush _his eyes his eyes in his eyes in his eyes in hi_

**_NO!_ **

Shiro felt himself gurgle up what could only be bile at the one word his existence could manage to utter, and it splashed all over the ground and on his pants as he heaved it out. There might have been blood mixed in there, but at this point, Shiro could feel something snap in him. Somehow, his mind wasn't gone, at least not completely. He became aware once more of where he was, of the fact that Keith didn’t have so many eyes and limbs on him anymore, and of the fact his face felt like someone had piled a literal ton of pancake makeup in a thickened line beneath both his eyes. Bangs of white fell onto his face, mingling with the rest of his hair.

 ** _-NOW YOU SEE.-_** Oh, ok, Zarkon was talking into his already disintegrated squishy pink space. Whatever that was called. _**-YOU WHO WOULD CALL YOURSELF THE SAVIOR OF THE NEVER-FAILING, THE UNBURNING FLAME, CANNOT EVEN SAVE YOURSELF.-**_

His cheeks felt sunken in, his chest felt sunken in, he felt sunken in. Everything was sinking around him and on him as his mind clung to what it could in the face of something so big and so desolate. After all, what could he possibly do in the face of the impossible?

And yet.

He could see those yellow sclera, still, in Keith’s remaining open two eyes, but he could also see the quiet pain in the way those pupils misted over. He could still see a gentle worry in the way he frowned; the way his hands seemed to struggle with wanting to immediately stretch out and grab at him.

 ** _-YOU COULD NEVER UNDERSTAND WHAT A STAR SPAWN OF AZATHOTH CAN USE OR NEED, MUCH LESS WHAT SUCH A SPAWN AS SUCH IS. IT IS A POWER, A FORCE OF NATURE UNTO ITSELF THAT CANNOT BE KILLED. EVER.-_ ** The way he couldn’t look at Zarkon, even when Zarkon lifted his chin up towards the massive eyes that glowed purple beneath the cloak. **- _THIS HUMAN FORM YOU DESIRE IS AS EPHEMERAL AS YOU ARE. AND YOU WILL HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO WATCH AS I FULFILL MY PACT, BEFORE TOGETHER AS ONE, AS WE ARE DESTINED TO BE, WE SHALL HAVE YOU RETURN TO THE NOTHING YOU CAME FROM, CURSING YOUR VERY SELF AS YOU COME TO THE IGNOMIOUS END YOU SO RIGHTLY DESERVE.-_**

Even if no one else saw it, he somehow could, and he could feel his heart shattering. Maybe Shiro was just imagining it all; maybe Keith was just an uncaring concept beyond comprehension and nothing more after all, and Shiro was a speck in the back of his mind’s eye and little else. If that was the case…well. He was pretty sure that while he didn’t have long to live anyways, what with the condition he was in, he still had to do _something_.

This was _unfair_. Whatever was happening at that moment, it was unfair, but somehow not for Shiro.

“Keith.”

His voice was hoarse, thick with what hadn’t all come up yet from his stomach. Keith’s head whipped away from Zarkon’s touch at his voice, turning to look over at his own crumpled body.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I presumed you were—”

Maybe he should have said these things _before_ Keith had opened his mind and then smashed it against a wall so casually. At least he could remember how to form complete sentences. Then again, to Shiro, he slowly came to realize that for him, it really didn’t matter what horrible ungodly things Keith showed him about himself now.

Not now, when he already knew that nothing would be worse for Shiro than for man in front of him to deny the joy he had experienced when he had been just plain old barista Keith, no matter how fleeting it had been. Even if the form of humanity was fleeting, he knew deep down that nothing else had been.

And maybe he was just being stubborn, but he wasn’t about to let Zarkon have the final say on the matter.

“…I love you.”

The words came out simple and easy, and somehow, somehow, Shiro managed something of a pained smile. The crest on his belly screamed for retribution at his words. He could feel the murder on the thoughts of every cultist there. He could even sense that the poor, forgotten virgin sacrifice was shutting her eyes at what was surely to come next.

He didn’t care. He was just going to take whatever happened next with something resembling calm stride.

“I thought…you should know—"

His heartfelt words were interrupted by him suddenly choking on a wailing scream as he was suddenly lifted a foot off the floor. The wound on his side suddenly pulsed hotly and noticeably, and Shiro could feel the jagged lines of his injury stretch upwards and outwards until tiny capillary-sized branches began to bloom on his face. 

 ** _-YOU.-_** The snarl in Zarkon’s projecting voice was enough to make his bones rattle and teeth chatter; it was all the control Zarkon was allowing him. That and rolling his eyes at what felt like a quasi-eldritch temper tantrum at the moment. _ **-YOU, WHO IS BUT A SPECK OF SAND IN THE FACE OF A TIDE, WOULD DARE TO ASSUME YOU COULD WIN HIM WITH SUCH POINTLESS WORDS?!-**_

The eyeroll Shiro responded with as a result only cause more pain, as he expected. The blackness of his sclera also began to spread, the worms bulging out until Shiro couldn’t even see anything but black writhing unless he looked straight ahead. Straight ahead he did look as Zarkon was right in front of him, his hood slowly falling to his shoulders to reveal the face beneath.

**_-YOU ARE AN ERRANT BOSON NOT FIT TO GRACE EVEN THE BOTTOM ORIFICES OF THE SLIMIEST DEEP ONES OF RESPLENDENT RY’LEH._ I _AM THE SPARK TO LIGHT THE MOST VOID  PARTS OF THE ABYSSAL UNENDING! IT IS I, HIGH PRIEST OF THE GAL’RA, WHO SHALL SEAL THE PACT, 10,000 YEARS MADE, AND BE WEDDED TO ITS GLORY!-_ **

Oh, _oh god_ , of course Zarkon wasn’t any kind of remotely human thing. It was like looking at a giant, angry purple cat-armadillo-man with glowing eyes and inversed teeth. It was like looking at Mitch’s old cat on steroids. Shiro wasn’t sure he wanted to know what it ate to make him smell do loathsomely dank, either. Then it got worse, because the absolutely-no-doubt-in-Shiro’s-mind alien fully tossed its coat off and _oh no no no **NO** it split into _ four pieces _and was_ wriggling _, it had honest-to-goodness_ chainsaw spikes _on it and it went to his_ knees _and were those swaying hairs surrounding it what he thought they were **IT SHOULD**_ **NOT _DO THAT_** —

 _ **-I COULD SNUFF YOUR LIFE OUT IN SO MANY WAYS AT THIS INSTANT.-**_ His throat rattled and his mind _thankfully_ went elsewhere as he felt the wound almost feed off of him, off of whatever was left of his body, until his pants fell off, followed by his underwear, and his shirt was unhelpfully flapping around him like a tent. In almost any other situation, everyone would be laughing at him for completely different reasons than they were now. **-** _ **QUICKLY, LIKE THIS, AND THEN, WHEN YOU HANG ON THE PRECIPICE OF OBLIVION, KEEP YOU ALIVE INDEFINITELY AS YOU BEG FOR RELEASE FROM YOUR PAIN.**_ **-**

The next thing Shiro knew, his bony hand was grabbing for his blade and holding it up to his throat. He struggled to regain control to no avail.

**_-PERHAPS I WILL MAKE YOU SLIT YOUR OWN THROAT. OR PERHAPS_ HERS _—!-_**

Then he was flying like a rag doll until he was hanging upside down, his hand with the blade mere inches from the poor virgin sacrifice, whose hair, he noticed, had gone entirely white from the sight of Keith’s true form.

“Um?” The woman nervously leaned her face away from the knife as best as he could. “You know, I know the whole…I love you…thing happened just now, but I think we kind of got off on the wrong foot earlier, and I think we’re _sort_ of sane right now? And I…I don’t want you to die thinking I’m a total bitch for yelling at you earlier.”

“What?” The priest was turned and was talking to his female lieutenant as Shiro simply floated. “Well, I mean…you really weren't, but I guess, since I’m hanging around doing nothing else…of my own choice…what were you thinking?”

“Snrk…” Got a chuckle. What was happening, what were they doing?  “Right, I say we may as well properly intro ourselves – strictly in the platonic sense – right now since…we’re going to die and lose our minds and all, right? Sacrifices that get slayed together get to pray together?...Right.”

“Oh, yeah, sure. Platonic is…great.” Practicing calm stride, maybe that was it. Or maybe just utter demoralizing resignation. Shiro could now get behind whatever this gesture was, at least. “I’d say we’re pretty boned. Let’s go for it.”

“Ok, so!” The woman sucked in air through her teeth. “Ah, hi. Name’s Patty, friends call me Ginger because of a bad dye job back in my teens. I’m an accountant and amateur pilot, just turned 32, probably noticed I’m bad at telling jokes, and…I’m the virgin sacrifice. I’m also a Virgo. Haha, go figure, I know.”

“Always on the nose, isn’t it?” It was almost like being on an awkward blind date while the restaurant was on fire. _Almost_. “I’m, uh, I’m Takashi Shirogane—”

“Oh! The Kerberos mission guy?”

“Yup. Pisces, 26, friends call me Shiro.” The word vomit coming out of his mouth was just so surreal. It was almost like meeting someone normally, save for the blood rushing to his head. “I’m the guy who just confessed to Keith, the…god?...the individual you’re going to be sacrificed to, and the chainsaw penis is going to kill me for it. I think that sums me up at the moment.”

“Oh, that is so cool!” Patty actually smiled. “You being…Takashi Shirogane, not—not the other stuff. Nice to meet you.”

“Like wiIIEE _AA **AH**_ —"

 ** _-…I COULD RIP YOU APART, MOLECULE BY MOLECULE…-_** Oh. It was a nice little reprieve while it lasted, as he was again flung across the massive cave. **- _BUT YOU…YOU WHO I WOULD TURN TO ASH, YOU WHO HAVE SEEN BUT A PHOTOGRAPHIC FLASH OF TRUTH, BOY, AND ASSUME IT TO BE SO FOR ALL OF ETERNITY, I HAVE A BETTER FATE FOR YOU.-_**

With a slam he was back down on the floor, and Shiro couldn’t breathe with all the wind knocked out of him.

**_-DIE BY THE METE OF YOUR OWN ARROGANCE.-_ **

He only just managed to sit up.

 _ **-YAGTH SIGN SHOGGOTH GOF’NN PH’NOG!-**_ Was that blackened husk Zarkon was squeezing _his kidney_ as the voice pounded straight into— _it was_! _**-SHOGGOTH Y’SLL’HA! SHOGGOTH Y’ULN! SHOGGOTH! UAAAH!-**_

Shiro barely had time to think up a colorful word to yell at the alien before his eyeballs were flooded with a flash of bright red fire. When the smoke cleared, his kidney was gone, and in place of it was—was—

It was him, newly-white forelock and all. But…no. No, that wasn’t him. He didn’t have tentacles. His skin didn’t bubble like that. He didn’t move like that. The pustules that screamed at him as the false-eyes opened—the wormy surface that teemed like oil-dipped hearts and then lungs and then gills and then fingers and they slithered towards his neck—he _wasn’t_ — _that wasn’t **him**_ —

He remembered bringing up a green substance alongside that black filth in his body at the sight of the thing being shoved in front of him at full projectile force. It mixed in with his dinner the previous night. Then, he remembered deciding never to have a foodstuff from 7-Heaven ever again, much less their hot dogs, no matter how hungry he was and whether Mitch was paying or not.

Then, he remembered nothing more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

It was who-knew-how-long when Shiro finally came to and could pull what was left of himself together once again. He was sitting on the ground, hunched over his knees, breathing heavily, and sweating terribly. The glowing viscera-encrusted blade was several feet away from him, and he could feel blood and slime coating the rim of his mouth. He could also feel a leaden weight swimming in his stomach, though it felt more like severe indigestion than anything else.

All around him, there were piles upon piles of robes scattered around permeated with glowing purple muck and…blood? Did alien cat-armadillos bleed? They probably did, just not like humans would. The massive blood-catching rune on the floor looked full, even overflowing, after all.

That was only in regards to the cultists Shiro didn’t know a lick about, at that. The blue-skinned female who had first led the chant was little more than a mummified, almost-human-looking husk beneath her robes, and Zarkon’s body had certain…appendages laying on the floor in a pile, with a Shiro-sized footprint indent haphazardly smashed into them.

Did _he_ do all of this? Had he—

“What happened,” he finally managed to croak out. “Keith?”

Keith was sitting cross-legged several feet away, in the bloody rune, still in his birthday suit. He looked completely fine.

“You slipped.” He said it with the emotion of someone picking out toothpaste. “You killed Zarkon, then you ripped out and stepped on his hemigenitals. Then you killed the shuggoth after it killed everyone else. It had something of yours, after all.”

A flash of **_AH’BTHNK NEPHRON AH’BTHNK NEPHRON_** tumbling from his screeching lips while hopping permeated Shiro’s mind. He turned away from the remains of the priest’s body, scooting on his legs.

“What else did I…” _Oh no._ “Patty? Ginger, are you here?”

“…bad puppy.”

She was there. She’d been freed from her bonds and was in a fetal position, wild eyes staring at the remains of…of… _oh_. The _thing_. It was almost entirely sludge now, but Shiro couldn’t help but feel revulsion at the sight of it. It was so like him, it was _of_ him, but at the same time Utterly Not, like a butterfly that came out of its cocoon wrong in the most painful way possible.

“Bad puppy.” It took some time for Shiro to stand up and slowly walk over to her. When he helped her up, she looked up at him, her hold on him tightening. “Bad puppy? Bad.”

“I’m ok. Are you ok, Patty?” Her eyes carried darkness and gleaming madness in them at the same time as she blankly stared, her face aged ten years. As he looked her over, he spotted the wound on her stomach – or rather, her lack of wound. All that was left was smears of blood. It made the mark still defiling his body weep. “You should get out of here now.”

“Puppy?”

“Hang on, let me—” Without a second thought, Shiro whipped his gunk-covered shirt and gently coaxed her to pull it over herself, before slipping his shoes off and sliding her feet into them. It was saying something that his utterly wrecked clothing fit her much better than they did him at the moment, and at this point him being nude was nothing in comparison to everything else. “Here. Where do you live?”

“Puppy. Bad puppy.” Despite her inability to otherwise speak, Shiro could sense what she was trying to say. Both of them having a psychic sledgehammer smashed over them repeatedly forced their minds to remain open to those in the chamber still alive; the words _Kips Bay_ and _apartment_ faintly reverberated. “Bad?”

“Yeah. Wait.” Shiro stumbled back to his also-destroyed pants and grabbed his wallet and phone, placing both into her hands. “Get a cab. Get home safe. Or go to a precinct. Whatever you do, use this. Ok? You’ll be ok.”

A crinkle of her nose, before she numbly nodded and accepted the offer. Without another word she slowly shambled off towards the elevator, huddled in Shiro’s shirt. As the _DONG_ finally tolled in the distance, Shiro turned to look back at Keith, who had been silent and unmoving as he watched it all unfold.

“ _Will_ she be ok?”

“Yeah, she’ll be good. Shuggoths are pretty tame in comparison to me, and she went through a lot more than that. She’ll at least have her language back in a couple days.” Keith’s eyes looked over towards the direction of the elevator beneath his hair. “You should have gone with her, you know. You shouldn’t stay here.”

“I know.” Shiro kept his eyes fixed on the other. “But you know why I didn’t.”

“You’re being stupid, Shiro.” Keith’s frown deepened as he crossed his arms. “You know when you killed Zarkon you made that mark permanent, right? He’s the one that put that there, not me. I can’t use my power to remove something without the one who channeled it through them in this realm.”

“...No, I didn't?” Shiro winced, both at the admission and the spike in pain on his side as he tried to step forward. Mitch’s files hadn’t mentioned anything about that little detail, but then again it had been a little thin when it came to the actual malodorous _wizardry_ that had actually been happening. “Oops?”

“Oops!? _Oops!?_ ” Keith was on his feet, his eyes practically glowing with irritation. “Shiro, don’t you _get_ it?! That mark is a repellent emblem! It controls your life force, drains you, and then kills you!”

Oh.

“It makes you waste away further when you approach Zi’nqar’ith without the caster’s permission!”

_Oh._

And here Shiro was, for just one glimmering moment, thinking killing Zarkon had been a _good_ thing during his madness.

“Do you get it now!?” Keith’s eyes began to fill with a hot glowing golden liquid. “Has it gotten through your thick, lovesick _skull_ what I’m saying to you, Takashi Shirogane!?”

“Wait—wait a second!” Shiro threw his hand towards the elevator, as a final moment of desperation, of fighting the new dread that was slamming down in front of him. “What about Patty? She had a mark like mine and—”

“I undid it because _I_ cast it! I wanted to keep her away from me, because I…” Keith shut his eyes tight, and the tears began to roll down in lines of faceted steam.“You should have just forgotten about me and left me alone and then you would have lived longer! _Why_ didn’t you just leave me _alone_ , you _stupid gnat_ of a **_human_** _—_!”

A screech on several simultaneous sound waves and levels emitted from his mouth that caused Shiro’s ears to pop, before he buried his face in his hands. After the ringing in his ears stopped, Shiro looked down.

“You know why.” He took a step forward, found himself leaning forward from the pain as his insides stained the ground. “Because I love you.”

“Because you’re _stupid_!” Came the muffled reply. “You’re just as inconsequential as the rest of your race, I don’t even know why I care about you! So what if you nice to me? Or that you like my taste in music? Or…or that I drank the coffee you bought me…that I’m glad you smile at me…and…I enjoyed…our…”

“Date?”

There was stone silence from Keith save for the hissing weeps once he trailed off. For Shiro, something clicked as he spoke the d-word and completed the sentence. Well, less clicked and more struck him so hard that if it was a real thunderbolt he would have been burnt like bacon.

“You didn’t think you’d enjoy those things because it was _human_.” There was almost awe in his tone. “But you did.”

Keith didn’t respond.

“…You never really knew what humanity could be like before you met me, did you?” It was a blazing sun rising in front of Shiro. A celestial body on fire, yet its heat was ice cold. Like Keith. “You just saw what _I_ saw when I saw the real you. The empty of…reality.”

_mnahn'_

“But…with me.” He looked at his hand. Even beneath the multiple coats of inner body extract and the black of mark, he could see the gentle swirling amaranth on his palm from where Keith’s hand – tentacle?  - had held his. “It was different, wasn’t it? It was—”

“An _accident_.”

Hearing that stung, but then, in his hands, Keith continued softly. The impossible sound of thunder rolled in the ceiling.

“I wasn’t supposed to have this form. To absorb it like I did and make it part of me wasn’t…I was supposed to just eat the mother, you know? _Just_ the _mother_. It was just supposed to be a _meal_ and nothing else. She and I had an understanding, she was one of mine. She gave herself willingly.”

Water began to drip from the wall and ceiling of the cavern. This time it was pure and clear, and it began to drip everywhere, save where it bent around Shiro and the blood-filled rune to avoid them entirely.

“We didn’t know what she had in her. She didn’t say anything about it and Zarkon didn’t catch it. I didn’t know…it was still _alive_ in her when I took her into me.”

“And you became the baby born after. Right?” Shiro’s eyes softened. “You were a cute baby, you know. Terrifying, but cute.”

The rain was cold, and he could feel the mist of the impacting water began to spray his legs. Where the tiny droplets hit, he could feel the unholy grime on him dissipate in dots and bits like breaths of air.

“Uh-huh, sure I was.”

“I mean it.” Shiro grunted and sat on the ground cross-legged, just like Keith. “You _were_.”

“I _sucked_ ,” the other grumbled. “I was helpless and a _baby_. I never felt so weak. I couldn’t even change for several years. I thought it was humiliating.”

“But you grew up human.”

“Not really.” The tentacle that snaked behind Keith did not go unnoticed. “I was always aware that I wasn’t really human at all. Just stuck with a weakness another of mine would call worse names than _humanity_.”

“It was enough for you,” Shiro clarified, “that you still wanted to feel human emotions. To just feel human.”

“…I _did_.” Keith brought his eyes up; the streaks of his tears were hard as stone on his cheeks. “And the more I felt human the more _alone_ I felt. The more I knew these feelings were fleeting and pointless, and that I was going to have to move on somehow, but I still kept _feeling_ them and I thought…Zarkon had been building up the amount of blood he heeded to open the gate and seal his Pact with me for so many millennium. I thought maybe when he went upwards to experience _ph'nglui_ , when I merged with him, I could just forget all about Earth and finally just…do my thing, you know? I didn’t need or deserve such dumb things.”

Shiro slowly unfolded his legs and began to shift forward towards the eldritch.

“But then you came along, and I felt those things more than ever, and I _couldn’t_ —” Keith began to tense. “Shiro, what are you…?”

Shiro grunted as he crawled over on hand and knees. He wasn’t sure how exactly he was still alive with all of the disgusting things leaking out of his wound from a significant amount of his body as he inched closer to Keith. At this point, the best he could wearily reason was that wasting curses caused bodily fluids to fluctuate and become non-Euclidean volume-wise.

“Shiro, _no_ —"

Either case, he wasn’t dead _quite_ yet, but he almost wished he was as he came within a foot of Keith and reached his hand up to the other’s face to brush the tears away. Worms swarmed his eyes, and he could feel his scalp burn along with his lungs and heart as the lines began to shoot upwards and deeper inwards.

After Shiro finished, he leaned back. He still hurt, and he could feel the mark had spread much further than before. He could barely see anymore save for the faint outline of Keith – not simply that of his human form, but also, he could somehow at the same time see the furled limbs and closed lines of the eyes of the thing Keith really was within.

“Why,” he murmured low as soon as he had regained the strength to somehow speak again, “Do you think so badly about yourself?”

“ _Shiro_ —”

“There’s nothing _wrong_ with what you’re going through.” He closed his eyes. “You should never be ashamed to feel those things. Whether it’s for me, or...it doesn’t matter. That’s…not up to anyone to decide but you.”

His head lolled down a bit. Was he dying yet? If so, he wasn’t entirely ready.

“I just know that…I _love you_ and you deserve to hear someone say that. I’ll say it as many times as I have to. I’ll do anything to show you that what I feel for you and how much you meant to me before and mean to me now. I’ll even die for you—I know it’s not logical, but love isn’t logical and neither is anything else right now, and…”

He was starting to ramble a bit from the pain and he knew it. Still, Shiro expected Keith to protest while he talked, probably because that was usually what people did when someone declared their intention to die for someone they loved, despite it being the truth. Instead, he heard Keith let out a quiet sigh.

“You’re only saying that love isn’t logical because you _are_ already dying for me, aren’t you?”

“Not…entirely.” A wet cough escaped Shiro’s lips. “I might also have…extensively read the Princess Bride at the Garrison…”

He could almost imagine the perplexed tentacle pinching the bridge of Keith’s nose.

“Let me guess, your favorite book?”

“My former commander’s, actually. He made me watch the movie every day too.” If Mitch was here Shiro would be dead for revealing such sensitive, top-secret information. Joke was on Mitch this time, though, he was totally dying for other reasons. “Maybe if we have the time we can watch it and you can quote it to your heart’s content to…wait, do you _have_ anyone to quote it to out there?”

“…No one.” Keith’s voice cracked. “And…it doesn’t matter. It can’t. Shiro, _please_. Leave me and never look back. If you don’t, you won’t make it through the night.”

Shiro shook his head. Even as he spoke, he could feel the elevator descend faster than ever before, open its doors wide for him beckoning him to leave – no doubt through Keith’s will. Even at the same time, the rain around them became torrential, speckled with dark blood, and he could feel the very essence of his exit start to fade away.

Keith was torn on what to do with him – on what he wanted for him, to stay or to go. Likewise, Shiro could feel in his bones that this was his last chance to get out and spend what was left of his last days with some sense of freedom, to simply go _home_ , to shed what he could of this eternal nightmare, prepare himself for the inevitable. Then he could die with a sense of peace and, perhaps, an intact mind.

Otherwise, it would be as if he never existed, and there would be no closure for those very few people and things he left behind. His family, his work, even Mitch who had some vague inkling of the reality that Shiro had plunged into - they might never know what became of him, if he didn’t go back.

“Hey, Keith.”

He knew if he didn’t leave, he would likely stay there forever in that forsaken place, even after he died. There would be no more escape or respite from seeing what lay beyond the veil.

“If you’re right, I’m going to die whether I leave this place or not.”

But if he left, Keith would be, on some level alone, probably forever, denying his new human emotions even while he craved something to validate them. It wouldn’t matter how many followers he commanded or what planes he led to after he left Earth, or how many people he ate if he ever came back to Earth. Maybe he'd be around in the next universe, it that was possible. In the end, though, nothing he did would work. Nothing mattered when one denied themselves, only to find there was nothing to fill that emptiness that was left behind, not even memories.

He wasn't sure how he got so...wise? crazy? both?...so fast, but Shiro couldn't let that possibility stand without a fight.

“Let me at least…help you make this mean something. Our chats, our date, getting to know each other…this.” His hand lightly touched his wound. “And this.” His fingers rubbed his palms where the red swirls were, and the flakes from Keith’s tears flecked out of his nails. “I want you to have something good to remember about being Keith, even when I’m dead and you’ve all but forgotten I have even existed.”

His hand went down.

“Please.”

Silence, except for the drops of rain hitting the floor. Then, after forever, he finally heard the elevator _DONG_ once more. He could visualize the doors shutting; then, instead of rising back up into the abandoned brownstone, as it would have had he been on it, instead it just disappeared. Gone, back to the void where it had come from.

He made his decision. There was no turning back. He could feel Keith sag.

“You really…are crazy. Stupid.” The rain began to ease up around them. “You would really do this for me.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t want anything in return. No magic, no power, fame or fortune. No dangled possibility of reversing your fate. Nothing.”

Shiro shook his head.

“You already told me there’s no way to stop this. No way out.” He took a deep breath. “You know, you were right about Kerberos? It was dangerous. I should have died on the mission. Losing my arm nearly killed me back then.”

The droplets turned hazy, bulbous, bright red. They stopped in mid-air, before slowly, gently floating back upwards towards the cavern’s ceiling. One brushed against Shiro’s cheek. It was pollen, and it left the smallest of slices on where it touched skin before travelling on wards.

“I couldn't handle not being in space after that. I thought I'd never be glad to wake up in the morning. But then I met _you_ , so I’m glad I didn’t die now.”

“…so am I.” Ah. _There_ was that adorable blush of Keith’s. He couldn’t see it, but he knew he was doing it, just by his tone. “Shiro, I can’t change what will happen to you. It’s my curse and yet Not mine. I can delay it, I can ease the symptoms, but only by so much. So, with the time you have left…”

He looked up at Shiro, those inhuman eyes, somehow, being the only thing Shiro could see through the black that was feasting on his eyeballs. Or maybe he wasn’t seeing, but seeing, and this was just something he was imagining in his mind’s eye. He was looking curious, even a little cute. He could get used to those eyes, no matter how monstrous or how many there were.

In fact, as he felt only the slightest tinges of dread prickling in the base of his neck, he realized he already had.

“What do you want to do?”

Shiro shrugged.

“Whatever you want. I can name lots of things, but…” He paused. “Keith, what, to you, is the most human thing you and I can think of to do together in the time we have left?”

He could personally think of a few things.

He just wasn’t quite expecting what came out of Keith’s mouth in response.


	3. Cs'uhn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The number of chapters is as amorphous as Keith.
> 
> Act the Final is now.

Keith hadn’t been lying when he mentioned he could ease the symptoms, or to extend his time, even if he couldn’t undo what was to ultimately come. A tentacle had snaked around the wound, and where it touched, the mark lines dimmed from black to grey. Shiro had gasped as his vision had come back and the black eyeworms relents enough for him to move his eyeballs around, though he nearly screamed when he saw the tentacles covering his face.

Nearly. Keith explained that each dip into insanity helped to build the mind against going back there if one survived, and eventually lessen the horror of it for the uninitiated. However, for what Keith wanted to do, Shiro couldn’t just go into it so cock-bared as he just had before. And yes, Keith really meant _cock-bared_ in this case.

“I want to have sex with you.”

Shiro had nearly choked on his saliva at the request that Keith answered with when he offered anything Keith wanted for their remaining time together.

“I want to know what it’s like.” Keith was dead serious, bringing a tentacle towards Shiro’s face. “I want to know what humans see in that pleasure, and I want to know it with you. My…date.”

Later, Shiro would learn, it wasn’t that the abominations Keith spawned from didn’t know what sex was, or didn’t have sex, or even didn’t have sex with humans. Keith had ‘family’ (or the best equivalent that slithering dolorous things of permanently impermanent shapes could generally claim) who were at least a little experienced in the art of Garvin Maye with the unimportant specks of flesh shambling about on Earth. Some just did it for a lark. Some did it because they had an insatiable sex drive, and humans were just there at the time. Some did to have kids at the behest of their followers, so that their progeny might work on their behalf among the ignorant throngs of mankind without _too_ much notice.

“Yeah, that last one happens, _sometimes_ , but it isn’t generally publicly known about. Not without causing a host of problems,” Keith admitted. “Last time it happened off the top of my head, unfortunately, it was more trouble than it was worth. There were twins, one of them ate half a town, the other twin kind of kept trying to rob the universities in the area for profane lit, so they have his remains, and now the local schools in those parts have…safeguards…against us…if they ever spot anything like us coming back to that area. It was a mess.”

“Oh geez.” Wait. “Keith, you don’t mean…they’ve figured out how to kill _you_?”

“Well, no, _kill_ is too strong a word to use for our kind,” Keith interjected. “ _Banish_ is better. _Putting us into death-like dream sleep_ works too, but it’s not really death like you know it. It's not permanent. It’s still not what I wanted to deal with, though, so that’s one of the reasons why I came here instead of Massachusetts.”

“ _One_ of them?”

“I…also…” Keith bit his lip. “I also wanted to try the food here? People said this place had good food, and that the pizza is just… _legendary._ I heard the water makes it taste a better kind of different.”

“Actually…” Shiro paused. “That’s not… _wrong_? It _is_ pretty good.”

“Yeah, see? And I wanted to try a _pepperoni_ pizza, specifically. Pepperoni is _delicious_ , it’s like eating human but not.” Keith threw his hands up. “You can’t get that kind of stuff on the outer planes of existence!”

“So…” This was simultaneously cute and scary. “You basically came here to try your equivalent of vegetarian cuisine.”

“And I never got even the chance to have a slice!” Keith pouted. “My followers kept looking for me even while I was trying to elude them, and then _you_ came into my life, and now here we are.”

But, in any case, lovemaking was almost always out of a motivation that was _definitely not love_ , much less the kind of love humans pursued. Nevertheless, it was a stark proposal for Keith to make when he made it.

“Well…” He stammered a bit, then thought about it, then nodded and smiled. Yes, fine, he could do this. He could do this for Keith. There was nothing wrong with this. He could work with it. “All right. I did say I would do what you wanted, so may as well go out with a _bang_ , right?”

Crickets.

“…Bad.” That earned him a disapproving whip-o-tentacle on the top of his hand, leaving the tell-tale hissing ice and mark on it. “Bad human. _Bad_. No blowing up.”

“Ahaha…be careful, Keith.” Oh, _oh_ boy, he could tell Keith was in fact a virgin with that. _No one_ who wasn’t would _whip another person_ after sexually propositioning them and then scold them so earnestly, eldritch or not. “I’ll need a safe word if you keep doing that to me.” 

“Wh—oh by the Blasphemous _Twins_.” Keith _got it_ and groaned. “I can’t believe you’re making jokes when I’m probably about to blow your mind.”

“That’s what _she_ said, Keith—”

“That’s it, I take back my offer of eternal deflowering and everything nice I ever said to you.”

“Keith,” Shiro chortled. “Don’t be like that.”

“I will be however I want!” The Abyssal Unending threw his tentahands – they were wavering back and forth form-wise from Keith’s disbelief – up. “I can’t believe you’re so…blasé about it.”

“I guess I probably should have told you before you said anything I have the worst sense of gallows humor when I’m of sound mind.” Shiro sheepishly shrugged. “This is just part and parcel of that.” 

Keith thankfully did not take his offer back. Instead, Shiro got a quick crash course on…safe words. Not the kinky kind. The mentally ingrain this in oneself to withstand the increasing ever-present disgust that welled up in the depths of one’s very self-kind, the kind that protected and shielded the mind from the full blast of the madness wrought by that which came from higher planes. For those in the cults, it took years to learn, so they could just withstand even the slightest drop of the grand illusion of their life.

Shiro had hours to do it and Keith was going to be showing him his full glory. The illusion wouldn’t be filtered – it would eventually be gone, and Shiro would have to contend with the full brunt of the true impossibility of Keith’s being. This all being aside from the sword hanging over his neck that was his inevitable death, naturally. He wasn't nervous, no _sir_.

“I’ll try to drop gradually,” Keith explained as he was ingraining the basics of what Shiro would need to survive…well, longer. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to control my full ascent once we…um…so this should ease things a little. You might also want to have something to ground you. Something in your mind’s eye to ensure you have something of your mind left during all of this. Something to power your will against my overwhelming one.”

That, at least, was easy. Even if the subject he was placing firmly in his mind was the same one as what would threaten it’s existence. Shiro closed his eyes.

“Got it.” The simple knowledge of knowing _this is Keith_ had brought him back before, and deep down he knew it would keep bringing him back as many times as it took before it all ended for him. “Just tell me what else I need to do.”

 

* * *

 

They were both already naked, so that was easy enough.

Keith took a deep breath, leaned into Shiro with a human embrace, and closed his eyes. Suddenly, Shiro could feel the air slow down around them, the particles vibrating and then going still. The wound almost ceased to pain him, and whatever pressure remained was dulled. Of course - Keith could slow down time to a crawl. That…that was so cool.

He lifted Keith’s chin up and gently brushed his lips against the other’s.

“I will make this moment worth it for you,” he whispered. “Just do what you think is natural.”

Keith’s arms suddenly liquefied, and Shiro felt his back crack from the sudden increase in strength. Keith’s lips pushed Shiro’s back into a kiss.

 ** _-No, Shiro.-_** He could feel eyes open on Keith’s body again, as they pressed against his torso, but this time he had words, had thoughts, had this is Keith to stop himself from reacting to the initial change. - **I _will make it worth it for_ you _._ -**

Two red-violet tentacles, then four, then eight, then over a dozen pushed against his back, coaxing his body off the floor. Slowly, gently, but firmly, Shiro felt himself lift, finding himself laying down on a soft and slimy bed of long limbs, with Keith above him.  His eyes glowed golden as his own tentacles kept him aloft, before lowering his human parts down onto him.

_This is Keith._

Keith’s mouth met Shiro’s again, and this time a hesitant tongue slipped into his mouth, which Shiro went to meet. Upon touch, it melted then hardened again, became an ice-cold block of sandpaper inside Shiro, scraping against the surface of Shiro’s mouth and filling it with a thick mist, before slinking and swirling around Shiro’s tongue like a vine. The sensation was choking and overwhelming, filling him to his tonsils and down to his throat.

When Keith released his mouth, Shiro breathed out hot fog, which became icicles that trickled down onto his skin. He leaned back up, his hand sliding down the side of Keith’s face. The hair on his face felt soft as pollen, and at the same time sharp as knives.

“How do you feel?”

 ** _-…Warm.-_** Indeed, Keith’s human face was flushed, as he leaned down to suck gently on Shiro’s mouth, then his upper pecs. Shiro could already feel himself working up a sweat at the thought of where Keith might be going with his mouth, which mingled with the icy, burning saliva slime Keith’s lip indentations left. - ** _A weird kind of warm. A_ good _kind of weird, Shiro…I want to try so many things with you, if we can do them...-_**

It was then that Shiro felt something tugging at his penis without warning. Hot and cold like the tentacles, but his eyes widened as he felt it suddenly suction over the entire shaft, with pins tingling against his skin. Yet Keith wasn’t there, he was kissing beneath his chest, fingers tracing feather-light around Shiro’s wound.

He looked down and to figure out what it was, just when Keith was moving to kiss him on his stomach, on his wound where he felt the embers of the burning inside him. For a millisecond, he could see what his mind could only register as something akin to _another_ mouth that was doing it, even as Keith was tracing ice-hot kisses down his stomach.  It had slithered down from somewhere _inside_ of Keith, and like a lamprey had rows of mouth-teeth that bulged noticeably beneath its half-lidded, eye-spotted red skin. Those eyes rolled up as the appendage went back and forth, up and down, from tip to testicles, squeezing rhythmic and tight.

_This is Keith. This is Keith. This too is Keith._

“Ooo _Oooh_ ,” he moaned, feeling his back arch with the movement, along with his penis, which _more_ than happily responded to the hypnotic pumping by raising up and growing plump, bringing the mouth with it as it did so. His fingernails dug into Keith as he began to rock slowly along with. “Wo...wow…”

A long smile crossed Keith’s face as his pupils slit; he gently suckled on Shiro’s navel, which only heightened the sparking in Shiro’s genitals. One more impossible crick of Keith’s neck downwards (Keith. This is Keith.) and he was right was on Shiro’s balls.

Shiro could feel himself unload into the lamprey mouth with a decidedly profound shake of his butt, and the sensation was enough to snap Keith’s head back towards Shiro, eyes wide.

“That…” Shiro felt haze overcome him as Keith’s surprised – and human again – voice wafted into his ears as through a Styrofoam cup. “What was that you just did? Shiro?”

It took Shiro a moment to uncross his eyes and focus on Keith. He couldn’t contain the dorky grin spreading on his face.

“A… _really_ good orgasm,” he managed to croak out. “Here. Let me have…one of your…”

He didn’t know if Keith could even remotely feel the same as he would, if he could even climax, if the concept was even something a monster could even experience. But he sure could try to simulate it. Soon he had a tentacle slipping across his cheek, and his hand went down to grasp the proffered limb. Gently, he began to suck on it, up and down in the same manner as the lamprey mouth had done so with his own, and he began to feel a strange, think liquid down his throat. He swallowed what he could, as he continued to use his tongue on the appendage.

He must have been doing _something_ right, as he could feel Keith start to writhe.

**_-Oh THIS—-_ **

He could feel the multiple eyes on Keith open right up again, and as he looked up, Shiro could see Keith’s stomach start to open, pulsating with mouths and red and purple and guts. But no, they weren’t guts, they were something else, something pulsing and spindly like spider legs and then another face was emerging from it and—

_This is Keith._

The mantra that kept him on focus and in something like sound mind was serving him well, as was the sudden, strangely relaxing feeling suddenly coursing through his body as the tendril let out a shot of what he had to assume was a half-petal-like…semen? He’d call it semen. It tasted like a hot-cold, almost crabby broth going down. He let out a mumbled sigh as he continued to suck on the tendril, almost like a baby, glowing neon goop sliding out of his mouth. It was a bit like being back in the hospital under sedation, but with the added benefit of coherence – and some slightly trippy colors as the cave around them started looking green and blue with yellow outlines.

 ** _-…That’s…never happened before with my ligulas.-_** He could feel the tendril wriggle out of his mouth as Keith’s words echoed in his mind. - ** _Sorry. I seem to have put you to…sleep?-_**

“No. Just relaxed.” Shiro was between paranoia and complete nonchalance with everything swirling in him. “I think…what do you think?”

 **- _…I want to be inside you again.-_** There was a sudden poke of tentacle between his legs, under his testicles. - ** _I…I…where…?-_**

“Looking for an opening…?” It almost tickled. “Got to go lower.”

It went down to under his butt cheeks and started poking the dimple in between.

**_-Here?-_ **

“No, no, up—”

It started poking the side of his thigh.

**_-Here, then.-_ **

“No, a little—lower—”

Back downwards, still on his thigh, here Keith somehow managed to find a _really_ sensitive and ticklish place, nevertheless.

“K-ke _ith_ ,” he gasped out a giggle as he spread his legs and angled bottom upwards. “I th- _think_ you should look where you put—”

**-Found it.-**

The relaxing feeling suddenly dissipated as, suddenly, it was replaced by pure pain as he felt the tentacle jam right up into him without any warning or hesitation – and then kept trying to push further in.

“Keee _EEE **EE** EEE_YESTHATISIT _AIII_ —” On the plus side, Shiro didn’t know he could ever hit a note in such a high octave, but there he was, letting out an agonized screech that would have imploded Cariah Marey’s eardrums. “KeithKeithpleaseKeith _KEITHPLEASEPULLI **TOUT**_ —”

It mercifully pulled out of him at that, and Shiro let out a shaky sigh as he flopped back onto the tentacle bed beneath him.

 ** _-What?-_** Keith’s slimy eyes popping out of his split stomach looked a bit put out (This is Keith. This is still Keith.) at the rejection. - ** _Isn’t that the right hole?-_**

“Hhk— _yes_ ,” Shiro coughed. “But..Keith, Keith. You…you need something to slick to…to put it in without hurting—”

He could hear the _squonch_ of some new liquid spurting out of the offending limb.

“Ok, good, _but_...also, you need to go slow.” He gasped as he saw the tentacle descend again. “You can’t put it all in at once! You'll split me apart for sure...”

 ** _-Slow…-_** There was irritation leaning on his mind. - ** _We_ can’t _go_ slow _, I_ can’t _just—!-_**

“Keith.”

His hand went up to Keith’s face. The eyes kept opening and closing and twitching, and all shined with impatience. He knew why.

“We can do it,” he murmured. “Keith? Relax. We have time. We can do this, so let’s do this right.”

He could feel the mark pulsing, deep in his side. But the air was still as ice around them. He gently coaxed Keith down to his face and gave him a kiss on the still-human forehead. ( _This is still Keith._ )

“Bit by bit.” He licked the goop still on his lips with his tongue, feeling himself sink back into that haze of relaxation. His eyes grew heavy, almost languorous, as he leaned into Keith. Slime dripped on his torso, leaving hot-cold marks on him as they swirled into his skin. “Ok? Put it in bit by bit. Take it easy and _relax_ , Keith.”

Keith’s eyebrows crinkled with concern, and he felt the tentacle once more poke at his anus. This time, however, he felt only the tip of it enter, and oh, yes, good, it was covered in something thick and slick. It wasn’t lube, he knew that, but it felt similar to the broth-like goo he put into his mouth. He could feel his opening start melt into it (not _literally_ melt, though, thankfully).

“Lean into me,” he whispered. “Keith? Gently. Let me hold you like you’re holding me.”

Keith’s body came down, as the tentacle gentle went back out, and then pushed in just a little more, slowly, and Shiro moan as it wriggled inside of him, more and more, slowly but steadily setting his anus aflame. Ah, he could see the eyes start to dilate, and more tentacles and pointed legs began to splay onto him and around him as Shiro pressed against Keith’s center.

He couldn’t quite call it Keith’s _human_ body anymore, what he was holding – it was significantly bigger than before, and the further they got along in this endeavor, the less human it looked. He could feel cellulose slime splitting over his legs, and Keith’s face shifting to look more like a grasshopper’s, his nostrils sucking into, lowering, and disappearing into the cloud-like flabs of his stretched, mark-lined chest.

_This is Keith._

Shiro could feel Keith’s swirling chest thumping against him, his true body squirming to break free beneath the false skin.

_This is…_

He felt the tentacle slide back out and then go back into him, just a little deeper than before. He could almost feel the tentacle go back and forth inside him, causing his anus to cry out for more, more, even as he felt himself tighten around it. Or maybe he was the one crying for it. He didn’t know; he was starting to lose it. Even the relaxing ooze coursing through his body seemed to hold no effect on him as he felt the colors turn bright and shoot particle lines all over the sides of his vision.

_This…_

Shiro let out a silent scream, his breath panting, his head throwing back, and his body shaking convulsing downwards as he felt something explode into him, inside him, just above his genitals, then rubbing and curling into his prostate. Time changed and stretched, and everything seemed to implode around him, His ears rang as he felt himself withdraw into himself, the mental and physical sensations hammering down on him through the nothing of sound and sensation that he found himself floating through.

Oh god, it felt _awful_ , but he couldn’t deny that the awful was very quickly overwhelmed by utter _pleasure_. It was nothing like he’d felt before. Something about this was so horrible, so different, and yet so _perfect_.

 _Keith…_ As he felt himself come back down from that absolute moment, an eternity later, his thoughts centered on the thing that kept him centered this whole time. He could feel the wound start tugging at him from inside, and he could feel something tick and heavy pooling inside his lower belly. His eyes were filled with tears of joy that were streaming thick and black down his face. _Keith._

Keith was barely holding himself together in front of him, and had – for the most part – shifted off of him. As sensation restored itself Shiro could feel the heaviness in his stomach start to move saw something twitch under his skin. He took a deep breath, his eyes rolling to the back of his head as he felt the tentacle start to withdraw from him.

“No,” he finally managed something. “No, keep…keep it…in.”

The tentacle stopped its retreat, but he could feel the ooze still inside of him, round as bubbles and hard as rocks. His eyes fluttered upwards as he made himself relax again, letting out deep, rhythmic breaths. He let the ooze still floating in his body take affect once more with its electric and wild colors.

 ** _-Shiro.-_** Keith’s voice filtered into his brain like an old, fuzzy Echoplex. It sounded frightened, but how could that be? - ** _Shiro, I almost…I felt_ something _in me, and then I almost lost control. I almost let go of time. I’m so_ sorry _.-_**

Shiro slowly, dreamily, shook his head.

“No, don't...you were doing it right.” His tongue was heavy as he spoke, like he’d just gotten out of a dentist’s chair. “It’s ok.”

 **- _Shiro.-_** There was a desperation in Keith’s true voice.  **- _I want to experience this with you, I_ do _, but if we keep going, if we go all the way…if_ I _go all the way…-_**

He’d lose control. Keith didn’t have to finish the sentence. Shiro could feel it. The moment Keith fully gave into that pleasure, Shiro would be done. Time would return and his choice of being like this with Keith would catch up to him. Once that happened, there would be no turning back.

He could feel the icy pollen trickle down from Keith’s eyes, all the way down to his toes; when the golden globs touched his body, they hissed and turned solid as stone.

“You…can be scared.” Shiro smiled, even as he felt his cheek turn to partial marble from Keith’s tears. “It’s ok, that’s natural. But I’m not gone. Not yet.”

The eyes all slowly moved up to look at Shiro’s face, wide with surprise.

“Keith. Shiro drew in a breath. “Let me go inside you.”

He felt the tentacle in him quiver.

“Let me give you my energy. Let me…do what you just did to me.” The thought of being inside Keith made him hard. “Let me hold you close to me and put a piece of myself in you so that when I’m gone, you have something of me to remember this all by.”

He exhaled his next words when he received no response, save a tiny nibble of dread.

“Let me fuck you, like you’re fucking me. Let’s do this together, now. Don’t hold back on me and I won’t hold back on you. Let’s let go so you can finally understand. That’s all I want. That’s all I need.”

It was an eternity before Keith gave his answer. Slowly, reluctantly, the lampreys, tentacles and spidery legs began to descend down towards him again, clacking together and holding him once more. Much as Keith had hugged him, before, but much more securely and more terrifying.

_No. This is Keith._

Even as Keith’s human penis began to split open like the husk of a physalis, with the neon purple tip of what was within bulging and ribbed and hanging and growing as it neared Shiro’s penis. It seemed to bloom with impossible quilete upon touching Shiro.

_No matter what…this is still Keith._

The quilete appendage bloomed and split in fives, revealing a large, twisting hole began to open in the thing. There was nothing in there. It was just pure blackness, do dark inside and so vast that it was impossible for Shiro to comprehend.

_Keith…_

He felt the voice close in on his dick, and he gasped as his organ turned hot, then cold.

“Haaa…” He took deep breaths as he looked up, seeing the bulk of Keith’s changing body lower down to him, pressing firmly against his body. Keith’s human face flickered like a light, the emotion in his eyes indecipherable. “This…this is fine. It will be fine.”

He wasn’t ready. But he had to be. He could do this. He had to. This was for Keith, and in a way, he realized, it was for himself as well.

His bottom began to move in experienced rolls, up and down, as he began to work. Soon enough, he could feel the tentacle inside of him start squirming and oozing with similar movements.

“…Love…” He suddenly found himself murmuring on a note. He’d…promised. He’d promised Keith he would sing for him. No time like the endless present. “I don’t like to see…so much pain.”

His body began to rock in beat to his whispered singing. He could feel the void start to tighten around his dick as he kept going. He could hear Keith’s moans, all 16 of them, all at the same time. Keith was getting into it. Keith was enjoying it.

“So…much wasted…and these moments keep…”

That was all he could ask for, even as he also felt things begin to fall apart around him.

“…slipping away…I…I get so…”

He shut his eyes and started going harder, rocking more, rocking faster, even as he felt Keith’s body drip onto him. Oh god, he was getting hard. He could feel more and more of Keith falling down around him, could feel the pressing against him suddenly become, somehow, ungodly heavy and feather-light.

“… _ti_ —red…!”

Increasingly lost in the emotions Shiro’s actions were causing, Keith was changing into itself. The air was getting hot as an oven. He kept going, thrusting, his body sweating, with his shaft as cold as ice. Harder and harder he went, as Shiro felt even more of Keith’s body touching him in every place, sliding down his face, his arms, raking through his hair, rubbing just above his balls, and thrusting that one increasingly engorged appendage and out of him.

Keith had wanted this. All this time, Keith had _needed_ this. A billion trillion years had left him starving for even the smallest of passionate moments, of something that wasn’t simply the eternal howling of godhood, and Shiro knew what he had to give was not even an atom’s worth of what he felt Keith deserved to have. He was so very _human_ , a moth drawn to a flame, and the moth always burned and withered to ash at its touch.

Oh but oh, he was going to _blow_. Shiro let out a keen noise and arched up, twisting and rolling through his orgasm, his seed thickly spilling forth like a spout. He could feel it all being greedily sucked into the shifting, dark, turbulence of nothing that was Keith’s insides. He could feel the thumping of the massive tentacle inside of him, ready to unload. He could feel everything and nothing all at once.

Then, just like that, Keith let out a scream on so many planes, and everything _collapsed_.

If Shiro’s release had been a flavor shot in a glass. Keith’s was a tidal wave trying to fit into a straw. The thing that was inside of Shiro’s anus burst like a shot, and Shiro was immediately overwhelmed by a great wave of freezing hit inside of him that spilled from his intestines to his throat, going back down and up into every open orifice if could find. His skin began to be dotted with veins of the semen-like substance, and it began gushing out of his mouth, and down into his lungs.

It was a black-and-purple glowing liquid, mixed with what Shiro had no doubt was his own blood. Pleasure and relaxation was overridden by the sudden, overwhelming realization of this is it, and his eyes bulged open as he gasped for air that he couldn’t catch with so much fluid inside of him.

That was when he saw Keith, in full, and in all of t's terrible, unholy glory. There was no human there, not anymore. His body was like a cooling meteor of bright reds, middling indigoes, and deep, dark purples, one cooked in its own fire and still bubbled and popped and sizzled with bubbling heat. The face, with all of its twenty-four flaming-yellow eyes centered around the teeth of ten shifting roaring mouths and a full beard of amaranth-shaped ossicles all around each, tips as sharp as saws. The tentacles and spindly spider-like legs shifted back and forth, both swimming in an unseen current as they dug into Shiro’s back and his chest from the solid, slime-encrusted sponge of a main body.

No, not like sponge – sponges didn’t _look_ like that. They didn’t have eyes or spiked tails that surfaced and sunk so, they didn’t have antennae that shifted and waved on top of the head like snakes, they didn’t have other subcutaneous limbs like deer sprouting out to keep them grounded on the floor as such, they didn’t have jagged bone spurs that were wings long decayed by the aeons on what was supposed to be their back but then not their back _but then their back again_ —

_This…is Keith._

Shiro’s eyes began to weep tears of so many dark colors at the horrible sight. It was far worse than he’d ever expected. It was insanity personified. He knew he was only _not_ insane again because of one fact, and he could feel that fact start to burn like the brand it was.

_Keith…_

Time was snapping back to its normal flow; the moment began up again like a car being started. The mark Zarkon put to ensure his death began to spread down to the capillary down to the bone, and the veins full of Keith began to cross-stitch like an ugly quilt with the mark.

_…you are…_

All of the time with him, all of the intimate and heavy contact he and Keith shared during that long, slowed down moment, came down upon him with mountainous, shrieking claws stretched wide.

_Beautiful._

He hoped Keith could hear him as he spoke in his mind; the wound and the alien semen in him was blocking his throat, and he couldn’t breathe, much less speak. The worms in his eyes were growing once more and in a feeding frenzy; soon he would see nothing of Keith at all. He could still feel, and could feel the tentacle bed retract beneath him, replaced by the cold hard ground of the floor beneath them. He didn’t fall, though. He knew Keith had carried him downwards. He knew Keith was above him, could feel more cold-hot liquid fall on him and turn to stone.

 ** _-Shiro!-_**  His retreating mind could hear Keith’s increasingly frantic cries of anguish as he came back down from his high, down whatever that was now his full form. **- _Shiro, Shiro, no, no no no please I can’t PLEASE NO—-_**

With what little strength Shiro could muster, he used the convulsions that were now rocking his body to move upwards, just enough so he could hand to Keith a final kiss. His organs, what were left of them, began to liquefy, then pool down along with lines of Keith’s essence down between his thighs.

_Keith…I love you._

He sent it out in his mind, with what was left. feeling his final breath leave his throat with a wet, gurgling rattle. He hoped it got to Keith, he truly did, before he slipped away on the tides of fate.

 _Always._   _I love you._

Everything was dark. There was nothing. Keith’s voice began to become distant like thunder until it was gone entirely, and all he could hear was his own thought, repeating over and over into the nothingness that consumed him.

_I love you._

This was death, then. This was oblivion. It wasn’t cold, or hot, he thought as he felt himself descend. It was…nothing but _nothing_. Just like he was. Just like he’d been before he met Keith – and what he still was after meeting him. He could feel his soul become light, or at least whatever it was that was left of him. His essence? Who knew at this point.

It, too, would soon be gone as well anyways, along with the only thought that let him hang on, even just for the moment.

_I love you._

He’d wanted it to last as well. The images of meeting Keith began to fade with him; all of the triple ristretto affogatos he’s been served over the months, and the one time he bought one for Keith as well, and he accepted. He would never give Keith another coffee again.

_I…love you._

He’d never get to introduce Keith to his parents, much less reconcile with them in some manner; he’d never meet whatever Keith had that passed as family. He’d never take Keith out for a good slice of New York pizza, or crack dorky jokes at his own expense, or watch movies together. They would never go on another date of any kind. They’d never see one another again.

_I…love…you._

No learning of those dark voids Keith knew all of his life. No more flying into space. No. He would never dance with Keith. He would never finish the song he tried to start, during those final moments. All those things that would be left undone, and all forever.

If only there had been a way for him and Keith beyond what they’d shared.

_I……love………_

It was just as he felt himself come apart entirely, just before he well and truly disappeared, that he heard the distorted, distant sound of a flute. Its melody was unlike anything he had experienced, and he felt a sudden, jerking _pull_.

The nothing turned into bright, spinning, infinite colors beyond colors, and he could hear the sound of what he could only comprehend as doors around him ( _but they were not doors, it was not a they to these that were around him and watching now_ ). He let the pull take him where it would, still not understanding what was happening to him.

_I love—_

He was absorbed into the closed eyes of the eternal dreamer that lay dead center of it all. It was then, as he felt the pressure of the infinite eyelids behind him, felt himself gazing into the ultimate truth of all things in front of him, that he realized his existence as he was, as the human named Takashi Shirogane, was well and good and all finished.

But that was, it suddenly seemed as he began to feel himself repeatedly crack open like an egg and give way to a decidedly _bigger_ himself, an unexpected, _minor_ technicality, all things considered.

 

* * *

 

Zi’nqar’ith was inconsolable.

It could fold time backwards to its very beginning with a mere thought, if it chose to. It could tear the planet asunder for the sin of having death awaiting its myriad of species (and oh did it have half a mind to do just that). It could turn every human into the same being, mold them into perfect replicas of whoever they wanted as often as they wanted. It could have them all profess their undying love for it, every minute of every day, until the dreamer woke up and everything vanished save that sense of saudade for the reality that was passed.

It could even bring back to life the rapidly-decaying corpse it wept flaming tears for, as the fluids of his organs and its ejaculation into him leaked out of his wrecked rectum and pooled beneath him. Re-animate it, have it walk, have it easily repeat all the wonderful things the Vrepit Sa-Dan once heard him say.  But the being who was as well the human called Keith knew it wouldn’t be the same. It would not have his soul. It wouldn’ really be _Shiro_. Shiro was dead, and his soul was gone, beyond a threshold that it couldn’t follow him through. All that he would have was a mere parrot.

It wailed for its lost innocence, if what it had could have been called innocence – its kind was almost always anything but. Still, it’s simple but raging emotions caused the ground above its unnatural abode to shake from the sheer weight of the emptiness it felt inside itself. It had the piece of Shiro that he had given so freely to him, that small, tiny squirt of semen, and that was all. Everything else was memories, and even the memories of a god could fade with the passing ages.

If that accident had never happened - if it had never absorbed the unborn child’s humanity into it - this never would have happened. This never would have hurt. Why did it have to hurt? Was this was being human was – to hurt, and be unhappy, and to lose those things that one came to

_Love._

The Abyssal Unending stopped at the sudden, unexpected sound that simultaneously finished his thought and yet began another one. There was a strange beat deep down in its cockles suddenly; the music accompanying it was faint. But the moment its mind could process what was happening, it knew.

_I…get so lost…sometimes._

It knew this music.

_Days…pass…and this emptiness…fills…_

It knew this voice. But—no. That wasn’t right. It should not be.

_my heart…_

It was the human’s voice that suddenly filled his mind. It…it _was_ …he knew it was. Yet it also sounded _Should Not Be_.

It looked down, barren stones still dripping from its multiple eyes; Shiro was still looking very dead, his now-skeletal body marked with black, and his blank eyes dripping red and purple, even as his remaining skin began to turn grey and yellow. Indeed, he had no pulse, no heartbeat.

Yet his lips were _moving_. His mouth sang, weak though it was, though the quiet voice was shifting from his throat, sliding down until it seemed to emanate from his chest.

_When I want…to run away… I drive out in…my car…_

It was not perfect, but it didn’t matter when the song in the air seemed to strengthen with each moment.

_but whichever…way I go…_

Well yes, that was silly to sing. Shiro couldn’t drive, he was dead. And _it_ didn’t drive because it didn’t need to, not when it could bend time like paper and then tear it apart without a second glance. But Zi’nqar’ith also knew this was the only Peter Gabriel song that Shiro knew the lyrics to. It was the song Shiro wanted to sing for him, promised to sing for him, _tried_ to sing to him but failed.

Yet he was singing it _now_. He Should Not have been able to. He should have been beyond songs, beyond a voice, and really existence in general.

_I come back to…the place you are…_

It was only when Shiro’s chest began to abruptly thump on its own, without rhythm and without warning, that it which was Keith suddenly realized that it had, without even realizing, placed Shiro upon the gate rune, during the ending stages of their lovemaking, during Shiro’s violent dying throes. All of the blood collected within to invoke the creature who was the gate as well to _open_ , all 10,000 years’ worth was _gone_ , drained by the forces who could unsee and undo. Zarkon’s ritual…had it… _had he_ …?

The song, meanwhile, began to echo through the air, from the corpse to inside the chambers to outside in the city in a simultaneous cacophony.

 _And all my instincts…they return_ _  
_ _And the…grand facade, so soon will burn_

The song and voice strengthened further, and soon the thumping inside Shiro’s naked chest became almost a wild thrashing, as that which was forming inside the corpse that yet clung to existence was ready to come out.

 _Without a noise_  

It was ready to _exist_ , be it again or for the first time or both. It didn’t really matter. It also didn’t really matter to Zi’nqar’ith because he was just about ready to burst into more tears - of joy this time - at the sight of what he was witnessing. 

_Without my pride_

The power of love? A fluke? Both?

_I reach out from the inside…_

It didn’t care. Nor did the monstrous squirming thing that was about to emerge. Shiro’s corpse began to stretch and flop almost cartoonishly, and a line of black began to split the body in half, straight down in the middle. The activity increased along with the crescendo to the chorus, as if that which was yet born wanted to make a proper entrance to the other, something special and unique and maybe _just_ a little romantic. In all ways it would be theirs. It was just waiting for the right time. It had to be at the chorus.

_in_

_your_

And when the right time came, New York _exploded_.

**_-eyes-_ **

Not _literally_ and not _everything_ , obviously. True, every stereo within a ten-mile radius exploded from the unadulterated sound of Peter Gabriel being played in more than a dozen aural dimensions. It was also true that the screen of every cell phone on the Atlantic Coast glitched into indecipherable runes, which resulted in those who read any of the gibberish on their screens to start bleeding technicolor tears. And yes, it would be remembered long after that every building within a five-block radius exploded with such a visceral bright black light that anyone unlucky enough to not be indoors would have transformed into half-human, half-shoggoth abominations for the next twenty minutes afterward.  

Oh, and the copy of The Princess Bride in Mitch’s hotel room burst into a pile of self-contained flames. Still, all those things were positively minor in comparison to what other births of this nature had been like. Besides, Shiro wasn’t going to go out of his way to be _rude_ to the human race he just accidentally left behind. Still, maybe he was showing off _just_ a little too, but it was all because he just wanted to show, _to be_ , and he wanted to show he wanted _to be_ with Keith as he emerged. All those things were his declarations, his power, the reveal of his apotheosis.

And he emerged from his cocoon, as a large, pendulous, mottled and tentacled form of mouths and gill rakers and star-shaped pollen, ever-blooming on his body into stalks of the blackest of five-pointed flowers. Smaller stubs of vibrating pollen-combing legs, and longer limbs of paws and fur flailed and then began to poke the air inquisitively, as he began to impossibly float upwards out of the void split open within the stomach Shiro’s corpse. The corpse itself finally stopped speaking and moving, save for sliding alongside the mass of appendages and birthing viscera that were now dripping down to the bottom of the newborn thing that was emerging, dragged about like a floppy meat puppet sock.

**_-The light the heat_ **

**_I am complete_ **

**_I see the doorway to a thousand churches-_ **

He (was _he_ even still a _he_ anymore? Oh well) kept singing, wisps of the whitest hair thin and soft as silk caressing one of his faces, his serenade causing Zi’nqar’ith to incoherently blubber with happiness and slime and ink. It was almost sublime – it knew Shiro hadn’t expected to survive. It certainly hadn’t expected Shiro to survive. But he had been so loving and caring and kind and _good_ , and had embraced Keith and everything about him, willing even to go to his death to make it feel – even for one moment – a little more human than it’d ever been or ever would be again.

**_-Shiro?-_ **

It let out a keening, questioning warble, and the other stopped singing, long enough to at least shake his former body off him, as gently as possible. Gently, in this case, sadly meant it was flung almost unceremoniously into the wall with a splat and landed on top of what was left of Zarkon, head limply landing over the deceased priest’s formerly-genitalled crotch.

Slowly, he moved closer to that form that looked even more beautiful now that he could see without going mad. He opened his eyes to reveal that he had 69 of them – all of them glowing, silver eyes, all of them with rippling crystalline irises that reflected back the light of the fire inside the Great Falseness. All of them moving into a position to look right at Zi’nqar’ith, making it shudder with anticipation as the newborn spoke with its now-true voice.

**_-Keith.-_ **

The thing that was once Shiro and at the same time Still Was (but also Not) had a voice much like he had before, to those who could hear beyond into the mind and recognize it. It was, at the same time, far deeper and far more booming, capable of an echo between those electric curved places between the solid bodies that lived in the visible void, if it made the effort.

**_-…Guess how many eyes I have now.-_ **

Even as the Never-Failing scoffed at their waggling, furry pustules (- ** _uuuuuuugh-_** ), the newborn gently leaned in to acknowledge he was there, that he was back and he wasn’t leaving ever again, and the two abominations that Should Never Have Been touched tendrils.

 **_-Accepting all I've done and said_ ** **_  
I want to stand and stare again-_ **

Each of their tentacles quivered as they rubbed against one another. Closer and closer they came to one another, each appendage joining and intertwining almost perfectly.

**_-‘Til there's nothing left out, oh  
It remains there in your eyes-_ **

The newborn’s back began to stretch out, but instead of more tentacles, there were instead great checkered wings which burst out in a flurry of petals, feathery and long and curled like ringlets. They flapped, once, twice, with power and wind, before finally flaring out and enclosing the two inside their massive span.

**_-Whatever comes and goes  
Oh it's in your eyes-_ **

Tentacles began to melt into tentacles, and the feathers began to drive bone into the back bone spurs of Zi’nqar’ith, giving it sharp talon wings in full once more. Eyes met eyes and they all began to ooze together, as did thoughts and minds until they knew nothing of their existence save one another.

**_-Shiro.-_ **

**_-Keith?-_ **

Reality bent to their combined will, space and time stilled. And in a single immortal instant, they became one. A new and old existence bound together without boundaries but with meaning. There was not just Zi’nqar’ith or a newborn ascended of a human soul. They were not just Keith, they were not just Shiro. They were something else.

_Sh’e’ith._

**_ -Yes.- _ **

They were the Two-In-One, the Immortal Mortal, the Amaranth-and-Hyacinth, the Red-and-Black, a horror of a new kind that was so right, even while it was unnaturally wrong. They would leave Earth, the world of mortality and ignorance that they nevertheless held such fondness for, and they would explore. Space, and time, and all those dark places, those unreal planes of dreams and beyond, that the small humans would forever remain unaware of - it would be theirs to find and experience, together.

**_ -…But first, pizza.- _ **

It would have been a crime to leave so quickly without Keith trying New York pizza, after all, and Shiro knew a _great_ place on 14 th St to get some.

 

* * *

 

Mitch Iverson wasn’t exactly sure how to process anything he was seeing or hearing as he woke up that next morning.

Apparently, the center of Manhattan was _covered_ with dead masses of… _things_ that were driving pedestrians mad, and an entire row of historic brownstones were all destroyed, the ruins covered with a black sludge of interminable origin; diggers who were looking for survivors had found entire piles of corpses in several of the decimated buildings. Radios and cell phones weren’t working properly and kept glitching or repeating the same, increasingly irritating Peter Gabriel song. A pizza place near Union Square called Champion’s was completely out of pepperoni pizza for reasons that, apparently, defied all logic.

There was also the little matter of his ash pile of former-book still smoldering in his hotel room’s bathroom sink – he’d been getting to a good part of it while on the toilet, and then as he turned the page, poof, abrupt flames. That, however, was peanuts, he could always get another copy.

No, there were some other things just couldn’t be replaced. It was coming out that Takashi Shirogane was dead. And it was probably that damned cult’s fault - Shiro’s body was apparently among those that could found relatively intact in the brownstone carnage, inside a fireplace that was believed to be the epicenter of…whatever the hell just occurred. Not only that, but an incoherent and otherwise naked woman picked up by a taxi was wearing a shirt of Shiro’s that was caked in blood and slime.

Mitch rubbed his temples, after he rubbed his eye, for several moments after he received that phone call. He’d warned him, but his subordinate…his friend…just didn’t _listen_. And for _what_? Love? Love didn’t mean anything if it _killed_ you, did it?

However, no one without permission from the President of all people was allowed to see it or even go near the house in question – not even Mitch himself, who had a considerably high clearance level within the federal government. Whatever had happened in there, it was apparently so bad they were flying a specialist in from some Massachusetts university – Mister-something-or-other-New England Ivy League school-blah-blah-etc. – who could apparently take in the crime scene without puking their guts out. Then, everyone’s remains would be twice-cremated and scattered in an undisclosed location, just to be on the safe side. It all seemed like overkill, even if the cult responsible for the carnage _was_ sick and twisted.

Maybe it was better that way, he thought as he entered the confused, chaotic cacophony of the city beyond. If Shiro’s remains really _were_ that bad off, it was likely better not to see them. It was better to remember Shiro as he had been, after all. A good man, and a good friend. Even if he’d been a lovestruck idiot in his last days.

As he shoved his hands into his pockets, he was abruptly stopped by a young, pale-skinned boy in a brighter-then-white t-shirt. His eyes were black as coals, and his hair blonde and gold and shining. It was like looking at a light void of warmth.

“Commander Mitch Iverson of the Galaxy Garrison? A message for you. A…present.” The boy shoved a box into his chest before Mitch could get a word in otherwise, forcing him to grab at it before it fell to the ground. “From the White Forelock itself. Don’t worry, _this_ one isn’t going to kill you.”

“What— _who_ —"

With a strange and toothy smile (when did children have _such_ _sharp_ teeth?), the boy was gone into the crowd, and Iverson looked over in the direction he’d gone. He had to do a double-take; for a moment, he could have sworn he saw Shiro, his face as pale as it had been the last time he saw him, but now, with a white streak of bangs over his right eye, his left eye a bright and clear silver. With his right hand, he waved with a smile that was all sharp and toothy, then turned and faced another man, just a little smaller than him, and then he leaned down putting both arms around him and—

 _Wait._ Mitch shook his head. _That wasn’t right. Shiro lost his right arm during Kerberos. Nothing about this is right._

His eyes blinked refocused, and all he saw in front of him was a group of firefighters hustling towards yet another spontaneous fire that had erupted in a nearby building. An illusion? Had to be, right? His mind playing tricks on him. The alternative…no, no, there was no alternative. Shiro was dead. Shiro was gone, and he would continue to mourn and not worry about the _but maybes_ nagging in his mind. Instead, he decided to focus on the box, which he opened up slowly and carefully. He found himself staring at a piece of pepperoni pizza, with a note that was in Shiro’s hand. It had to be – Mitch would know what his handwriting would look like, especially his left-handed writing.

**_We saved the last piece for you. Enjoy._ **

The piece of pizza had, in the corner, a set of bite marks that were wide and couldn’t have been remotely human.

Mitch stared at the offering, his hands clenching tightly around the box.

“ _Son_ of a bitch,” he grumbled. “If this is a joke, it’s _not funny_.”

He ate it, nevertheless. It was ok, but it was lukewarm at _best_ , and there was a strange, crabby aftertaste in his saliva as he finished it off. It was the kind of taste that seemed to make all of the reds and blacks stand out in his vision like burning flames. Soon enough he found himself back in his hotel nursing a shot of whiskey to try and get the sensation out of his throat and the vividness out of his mind.

Later that day, a package appeared without warning in an office somewhere in Midtown. It was a review of a Bex-Box Won space simulation, along with a letter of resignation. Shiro’s boss stared blankly at the letter, then tossed it in the air.

“Right, ok, this is fine. This...this is all fine.” He plopped into his chair, staring dead-eyed at his computer screen. “I just got a resignation letter from a dead man.”

Also that afternoon, a gentle cloud of invisible pollen descended down into the city, burying themselves deep into the ground. The hybrid that resulted – a deep-dark purple love-lies-bleeding with hyacinth bunches mixed in – became a hit at next year’s Fashion Week, as much for their inability to live without water as their exotic look. It was said the ones who conspired to plant such a thing had to be mad, and those who listened could swear they heard two intertwined voices whispering a language so alien it popped the eardrums. Half the models who wore them also suddenly began jumping off the runways, stabbing the nearest fleshbags they could find with sharpened stilettos while they lost _themselves_ in a storm of screeching, slobbering madness.

In other words, it had been a normal day in New York, where unexpected things always happened. So it goes. But it could have been worse, and as far as I'm concerned, the rest doesn't matter. The story I came to tell you is over.

So let us raise a toast to love, you who came to listen to me. For once, I say this counts as a happy ending.

Now.

I think it's Brad's turn to feed the shoggoths. Shall we, Brad? Stop screaming, it won't hurt. _Much._

The rest of you, let us pray.

 

 

 

**_orr'e hupadgh Shuggoth_ **

**_nglui ph’lw'nafh nog ftaghu_ **

**_cgotha grah’n goka_ **

**_f’sgn'wahl hai 'bthnk_ **

**_Shuggoth llll Zi’nqar’ith_ **

**_f’ah syha'h_ **

****

****

**Y’HAH**


End file.
